Intelligent machines of the future will help restore memory, mind your children, fetch your coffee and even care for aging parents.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
It will all be part of a brave new world of the not-so-distant future, in which innovative smart machines, rather than being the undoing of people \u2014 as some technophobes have long feared \u2014 actually enhance humans.<\/p>\n
Many expert say technology will allow people to take on tasks they might only have dreamed of in the past.<\/p>\n
\u201cSuper-intelligence should give us super-human abilities,\u201d said Tom Gruber, head of the team responsible for Apple\u2019s Siri digital assistant, during an on-stage talk at the prestigious TED Conference.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs machines get smarter, so do we,\u201d Gruber said.<\/p>\n
\u201cArtificial intelligence can enable partnerships where each human on the team is doing what they do best,\u201d he told the popular technology conference.<\/p>\n
Gruber, a co-creator of Siri and artificial intelligence research at Apple, told of being drawn to the field three decades ago by the potential for technology to meet people\u2019s needs.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am happy to see that the idea of an intelligent personal assistant is mainstream,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Now he has taken his innovative approach to smart machines, and is turning the thinking about the technology on its head.<\/p>\n
\u201cInstead of asking how smart we can make our machines, let\u2019s ask how smart our machines can make us,\u201d Gruber said.<\/p>\n
Already smart technology is taking hold, with popular digital assistants like Apple\u2019s Siri, created Gruber.<\/p>\n
South Korean giant Samsung created Bixby to break into a surging market for voice-activated virtual assistants, which includes Amazon\u2019s Alexa, Google\u2019s Assistant and Microsoft\u2019s Cortana.<\/p>\n
Amazon appears to have impacted the sector the most with its connected speakers using Alexa. The service allows users a wide range of voice interactions for music, news, purchases and connects with smart home devices.<\/p>\n
Gruber envisions artificial intelligence \u2014 AI \u2014 getting even more personal, perhaps augmenting human memory.<\/p>\n
\u201cHuman memory is famously flawed \u2014 like, where did the 1960s go and can I go there too?\u201d Gruber quipped.<\/p>\n
He spoke of a future in which artificial intelligence remembers everyone met during a lifetime and details of everything someone read, heard, said or did.<\/p>\n
\u201cFrom the tiniest clue it could help you retrieve anything you\u2019ve seen or heard before,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI believe AI will make personal memory enhancement a reality; I think it\u2019s inevitable.\u201d<\/p>\n
Such memories would need to be private, with people choosing what to keep, and be kept absolutely secure, he maintained.<\/p>\n
Boston Dynamics robotics company founder Marc Raibert was at TED with a four-legged SpotMini robot nimble enough to frolic amid the conference crowd.<\/p>\n
He smiled but would not comment when asked by AFP about the potential to imbue program the gadget with the kind of artificial intelligence described by fellow speakers.<\/p>\n
Raibert did, however, note that the robots are designed to be compatible with new \u201cuser interfaces.\u201d<\/p>\n
Current virtual assistants have been described as a step into an era of controlling computers by speaking instead of typing or tapping screens.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it won\u2019t be too long before we\u2019re using robots to take care of our parents, or help our children take care of us,\u201d Raibert said from the TED Talk.<\/p>\n
Not everyone at TED embraced the idea of a future in which machines are smarter and more capable than humans, however.<\/p>\n
Stuart Russell, a University of California at Berkeley computer sciences professor, referred to the situation as the \u201cgorilla problem\u201d in that when smarter humans came along it boded ill for evolutionary ancestors.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis queasy feeling that making something smarter than your own species is not a good idea,\u201d said Russell, co-author of the book Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach.<\/p>\n
As an AI researcher he supported research in the technology.<\/p>\n
However, he urged programming machines with robotic laws of behavior, in a shrewed spin on work of science fiction author Isaac Asimov.<\/p>\n
He gave the example of a robot being told to simply fetch coffee.<\/p>\n
A machine not constrained by proper principles might decide that accomplishing the task required it to defend against being shut down and remove all obstacles from its path by whatever means necessary.<\/p>\n
Russell counseled robot principles including altruism, humility, and making a priority of human values.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou are probably better off with a machine that is like this,\u201d Russell said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is a first step in human compatibility with AI.\u201d\u2014AFP<\/p>\n
Image: AFP)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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