Will Computers, Artificial Intelligence and Robotics Replace Us for the Better?

 

 

 I have just returned from Kuala Lumpur Hospital after getting my chronic leg wound dressed up due to venous stasis ulcers that refused to heal even undergoing two surgeries, the first one was on 19 September 2022 using radio frequency ablation, and the second one was on 18 October 2023 using VenaSeal (clue sealant). It is quite a disappointment for me as a doctor to find even conventional surgery has not helped me.

After getting my leg dressing done, I saw a robot automatically cleaning the floors of the hospital. My wife who was with me was very impressed with how intelligent and obedient that cleaning machine is, 1 meter high and 1.5 meters in circumference. But I was not that impressed. The operators told my wife each machine cost RM100,000. I then told them these robotic cleaners would soon throw them out of employment to their smiles 

Let me explain.

I thought to myself a robotic machine is especially made to be intelligent to take over the mundane tasks of humans.

Robots don’t have to be very intelligent to be intelligent enough, says Dr Isaac Asimov in an article he wrote. According to him, if a robot can follow simple orders and do the housework or run simple machines like what I saw of a robotic floor cleaning machine at the hospital we would be satisfied.

Constructing a robot is hard, with me agreeing with Dr Asimov because we must fit a very compact computer inside its skull, if it is to have a vaguely human shape unlike the floor cleaning machine I saw at the hospital. Making a sufficiently complex computer as compact as the human brain is even harder.

But robots aside, why bother making a computer that compact? The units that make up a computer have been getting smaller and smaller, to be sure, from vacuum tubes to transistors to tiny integrated circuits to silicon chips. Suppose that, in addition to making the units smaller, we also make the whole structure bigger.

A human brain that gets too large I suppose would eventually begin to lose efficiency because nerve impulses don’t travel very quickly.  Even the speediest nerve impulses travel at only 6 km per minute. A nerve impulse can flash from one end of the brain to the other in four-hundred-fortieth of a second, but a 15 km long nerve, if there was one, would require 2.4 minutes for its impulse to travel this length. The added complexity made possible by the enormous size would fall apart simply because of the long wait for information for it to travel and process within the system.

Computers, however, use electrical impulses that travel at over 17,700,000 km per minute which is 98.4 the speed of light, typically at 50%–99% of the speed of light in vacuum, the speed of light is 299792 km per second. A computer 650 km wide would still flash electric impulses from one end to the other in just 0.002 second. We can see this ourselves the speed in which the Internet and Google search information for us. It is able to search and retrieve a long list of information and materials for us containing that word we typed in a teeny-tiny fraction of a second which would have taken us hours to search. 

 In this respect, at least a computer of gigantic size could still be able to process information and data as quickly as the human brain is able.  

Hence, if we conceive the idea of a computer that has finer and finer components more and more intricately interrelated, and additionally those same computers becoming larger and larger, might it not be possible that computers eventually become capable of performing all those functions a human brain could?

The question we might like to ask would there be a theoretical limit to how intelligent a computer could become?

This far, I have not heard of any. It seems that each time we learn to pack more and more complexities into a given volume, the computer can do even more. Each time we make a computer or a robot larger while keeping each portion as densely complex as possible, the computer can do more.

Finally, if we learn how to make a computer sufficiently large and complex enough, why should it not achieve human intelligence?

Some may argue that how could a computer create great works of art, compose masterpieces of symphonies, or come out with great scientific theories beyond human minds. But can we achieve these ourselves using our intelligence? But of course, ordinary humans may not be able, but we have geniuses with us, albeit not many.   

They attained genius status only because the atoms and molecules in their brains have arranged themselves in some form of complex orders as there are more than just idle atoms and molecules. Just like computers too are made of molecules except they are arranged in a special sophisticated way to make them a genius too. However, if the electronic components in a computer are not as small as our human brain, we can compensate for this problem by making the computer larger and still, its electrical impulses can still travel far faster than the nerve impulses within our brain for it to speed up analysis of information they gather.

Naturally, we expect others to say that computers can only do what they have been programmed to do. Yes, true. But they forget or have no idea in neuroscience that the human brain too is programmed to do by learning and by its genes. Part of the brain’s programming is its ability to learn which is the same as part of a complex computer’s programming.

In truth, if a computer can be designed to be as intelligent as us, why can’t it be built and programmed to be even more intelligent? Why not?

In the evolution of life on Earth over a period of three billion years this has happened as a random hit and miss of atoms and molecules to the development of intelligent life on this planet. I think things will move further on as our thinking brains will be able to build more and more intelligent computers such as Artificial Intelligence as it already exists now, together with our human brains that too are getting more and more intelligent and more knowledgeable and learned. Why not?

But should computers get too intelligent to replace us? Well, they should be capable due to our own doing. Take my condolences. They may develop to be kind and compassionate towards us to let us dwindle by attrition and self-destruction. They may keep a few of us as pets, others in their zoos, the remaining of us for their entertainment.

Consider what are we presently doing to ourselves and to all other living species of life here sharing space together, from the way we produce, consume, congest, and pollute.

I strongly believe it is about time for us to be replaced by supercomputers, artificial intelligence and robotics to take over our lives so that we will not defile this only home of ours further, and let non-living, non-polluting intelligent computers and Artificial Intelligence to take over in order for the less intelligent species of life to have their rightful place here on this only habitable planet of ours.

Once we are replaced, robots may not need cleaners that were able to mop entire long stretches of hospital corridors, go into every nook and corner, and were able to avoid obstacles on their own anymore as they do not dirty and pollute like us humans do.

But if humanity is no longer around, and should this world be run by robots, Artificial Intelligence and computers with non-human animals allowed to exist, then it shall be a world without souls. That would be another problem. 

Lim jb