The Conception of AI (I)
Artificial intelligence is nothing unique to the 20th century. Cultures for thousands of years have been ascribing sentience to living objects. Animism, one of the very first forms of religion, says that everything has its own individual soul, whether it be a rock or a plant or something as intangible as the wind. What is unique to the period we live in, however, is that we have the potential to allow this otherworldly form of life to speak back. Read more
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AI: What is It and is It Alive? (II)
The development of artificial intelligence led to some important questions, which the scientists involved in this study have been forced to consider. Mainly, what exactly constitutes an artificial intelligence and-if total self-awareness in a machine could be achieved-would that machine then be alive in and of itself? Read more
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The Technology of AI Development (III)
There are two main schools of thought in regards to the technological processes in creating artificial intelligence: the symbolic approach and the sub-symbolic approach. These two camps are very similar in belief to those who differ on the requirements of determining a human-level intellect. The symbolic adherents attempt to recreate the processes of the mind using a psychological replication - by reproducing the capabilities of the human mind - and those of the sub-symbolic school seek to follow a process of biological replication, creating the base of the human mind and letting the program act on those systems. This argument is further complicated by the debate over whether an AI needs a body and sensory input to complete its conception. Read more
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Neural Networks at a Glance (IV)
A seemingly logical step in the development of artificial life, neural networks have been studied for more than 60 years. By modeling programs after the way that human brains actually work, there is a possibility to replicate the unknown factor that makes humans sentient, intelligent beings. Neural networks have become increasingly popular in the world of AI development for their organic properties and ability to learn. Traditionally, the term Neural Networks referred to the circuit of biological neurons within the brains of humans. In modern usage, the term has come to be synonymous with the field of artificial neural networks, computer replications of neural circuits. There are a few types of neural networks that have become prominent in studying artificial intelligence. Read more
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