Advances in Artificial Intelligence Benefit Our Lives

Advances in Artificial Intelligence Benefit Our Lives

A young teenage girl enters the psychologist’s, Eliza’s, office apprehensively and sits down upon a chair. The girl begins by saying, “Men are all alike.” “In what way?’ replies Eliza. “Well they are always trying to run things in one way or another,” the girl laments. “Can you think of a specific example?” “Well my boyfriend made me come here.” “Your boyfriend made you come here?” “He says I’m depressed all the time.” “I’m sorry to hear that you are depressed.” “It’s true that I am unhappy.” “Do you think coming here will help you not to be unhappy?” “Perhaps I can get along with my mother better.” “Tell me more about your family?” Eliza inquires. And the conversation goes on.

While this seems like a very ordinary psychologist and patient session, it is indeed not. Eliza is an artificial intelligence program. She is the result of researcher, Joseph Wiezbaum's, attempt to make a program that can converse in English. Eliza amazed people when she appeared in the late 1960’s. She was able to converse about any subject, because she stored vast subject information in her data banks. In addition Eliza was deftly able to pick up speech patterns. Suprisingly, after creating one of the most famous programs Wiezbaum objected to bonds that interviewees were making with his creation, and denounced the intelligence of Eliza. She was intelligent, however, she could not think for herself, she was a product of sophisticated programming (Waltz). While it seemed like Eliza could understand the girl, she no more understood the girl and her problems than an alarm clock knows when to wake someone up. Eliza was one of the first programs using artificial intelligence developed; one can on...

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...ure of AI. The advancements in the quest for artificial intelligence have, and will continue to affect and benefit our jobs, our education, and our lives.

Bibliography:

Works Cited

De Garis, Dr. Hugo. “Moral Dilemmas Concerning the Ultra Intelligent Machine.” Brain Builder Group. May 1998. 2 November 1999 .

Epstein, Jeffery. “Computers with Emotions.” The Futurist. Apr. 1998: 12.

Hinrichs, Bruce. “Computing the Mind.” The Humanist. Mar.-Apr. 1998: 26-31.

McCarthy, John. “What Is Artificial Intelligence.” 5 December 1998. 1 November 1999 .

Rheingold, Howard. Virtual Reality. New York: Summit Books, 1991.

Waltz, David L. “Artificial Intelligence: Realizing the Ultimate Promises of Computing.” NEC Research Institute and the Computing Research Association (1996): 2 November 1999 .

Zyons, Daniel. “Immorality at Last.” Forbes. November 1998: 180-184.