How similar is the artificial intelligence in today's computers to God from the movie 2001 A Space Odyssey, and how does it compare to a spaceship that is now flying in space
When we first meet Hal in A Space Odyssey it seems like there's nothing this computer can't do. Hal directs the spaceship Discovery towards Jupiter, maintains the life support system, plays a team game of chess, has an opinion on a sketch drawn by one of the astronauts and also answers questions from BBC interviewers.
Later we learn that God can also read lips. Very quickly we wonder if God is more human than machine? Is his intelligence really artificial? Even one of the astronauts admitted that he wasn't sure if Hull's emotional responses to the interview questions were real or part of the programming.
God's downfall begins when he discovers one of the virtues of being human, and he screws up.
The astronauts begin to doubt his ability and his response is to murder the astronauts, with the exception of Dave Bowman who managed to be saved thanks to his human cunning.
At the beginning of the real 2001, we don't have computers with impressive capabilities like Hal's. But we have Deep Space 1. This half-ton spacecraft was launched in October 1998 to test new space technologies, including artificial intelligence. "This is the first time any spacecraft relies on artificial intelligence," says Dr. Mark Rayman, lead engineer on the Deep Space 1 project at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Expensive spacecraft, so future space missions don't have to risk it."
In some ways, Deep Space 1 is not unlike God. The autonomous navigation systems navigate the spacecraft relying on known asteroids and stars. She can think for herself using software called "Remote Agent". This system receives a series of objectives from the ground controllers, but it decides how to carry them out. The system reports to Earth about the state of the system ranging from "everything is fine" to "I need help now."
"Everyone agrees that these systems are capable of making decisions on their own." says Rayman. "With its autonomy, we transfer responsibility from humans on the ground to the spacecraft. Of all the experiments on the spacecraft, only the remote agent can be defined as artificial intelligence. Reiman says that initially the controllers tried to give the spacecraft a series of activities to perform in the coming days. What happened next was not what they expected "We were surprised," he said, "because it wasn't what we planned. The system reached the results that were expected of it in a completely different way. And that's exactly what you should expect from artificial intelligence," he concludes.
Since the experiment it has only become more difficult for the controllers to program the spacecraft. They ran 4 simulations that failed. In one case they tried to close a device and failed. The computer alone came to the same conclusion - that it needs to be rebooted. That's a pretty impressive response. But he also did not succeed in this himself like the mornings. Therefore he programmed a series of commands that take into account that the same device is open even though it was supposed to be closed. "Reiman says this kind of independent thinking becomes important as the spacecraft moves deeper into the outer solar system. A spacecraft on the far side of a planet, a side hidden from Earth, would not be able to communicate with flight controllers and might make important decisions on its own.
A mission to Pluto would be too far away and too much time for the spacecraft to wait for instructions. A spacecraft that lands on a comet may make quick decisions to ignite, until it is not enough to involve the humans.
But what about God? Is it possible that one day a computer will decide that humans are unnecessary? At some point it's possible that an artificial intelligence system on board a spacecraft might decide that it knows more than the human instructions told it, and that it could completely change the plan." says Riemann. "If you've built a good artificial intelligence system it might make the right decisions. On Deep Space 1, she made the decisions differently than we expected, but they were the right decisions because she had more information than we did."
At certain points you must develop trust in the computer. And I guess it's like people making a decision one day to send their children into the world. I taught them the best I could, and now it's time to let them make the right decisions." This boy is a long way from home. He is currently 350 million kilometers from Earth on the far side of the Sun. If all goes well, he will visit Comet Burley in September 2001 .
(Borrelly).
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