"The primitive forms of artificial intelligence we already have, have proved very useful. But I think the development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race," Stephen Hawking (1944-2018) told the BBC in 2014. "Once humans develop artificial intelligence it would take off on its own, and re-design itself at an ever increasing rate," he said. This has stirred a number of arguments.
A.
Allan Tucker, a senior lecturer in computer science at Britain's Brunel University, took a look at the hurdles facing AI. Recent years have seen dramatic gains in data-processing speed, spurring flexible software to enable a machine to learn from its mistakes, he said. Balance and reflexes, too, have made big advances.
B.
Tucker pointed to the US firm Boston Dynamics as being in the research vanguard. It has designed four-footed robots called BigDog ( www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1czBcnX1Ww ) and WildCat ( www.youtube.com/watch?v=dhooVgC_0eY ), with funding from the Pentagon‘s hi-tech research arm.
C.
"These things are incredible tools that are really adaptative to an environment, but there is still a human there, directing them," said Tucker. "To me, none of these are close to what true AI is."
D.
Tony Cohn, a professor of automated reasoning at Leeds University in northern England, said full AI is "still a long way off... not in my lifetime certainly, and I would say still many decades, given (the) current rate of progress."