Everybody knows Siri: the artificial intelligence developed by Apple that helps most people perform functions such as setting a timer, opening apps, searching information on the internet, and even can sometimes share funny answers. But how was it created, and why would someone go that far with voice recognition, as well as helping with numerous functions to make your life easier? This is all about artificial intelligence, and as years go by, people will start to create more and more of it. I chose this topic because of how smart AI is and how vast it is too. This is an important yet interesting subject with many reasons why we rely on phones and computers so much. It is one area I love to think about because I find AI sentient (able to feel and perceive things), and consider it a significant part of not only my life but also the life of my peers and friends. This leads me to think about how successful AI is at getting our minds to think that they are real human beings. In this research, I will use an article from Trevor English that discusses the history of AI and how it originated. I will also use materials from the MIT School of Engineering which tell how AI lives up to its name and when it will “take over the world.” I have also used the information from Wall Street Journal’s YouTube channel where two people are debating whether AI is alive. Therefore, I will be talking about the main idea and history of AI, how close we are to solving the mystery of AI, and the advantages and disadvantages of AI.

Evolution and Qualities of AI
Everything has to start somewhere. And everything has to change in some way. To start, a character called Tin Man was developed by L. Frank Baum, in his famous story Wizard of Oz. The Tin Man was an inspiration for AI robots that would communicate with people as if he was a human (Anhoya, 2017). Later on, by the mid-20th century, Alan Turing and other scientists and engineers managed to develop the idea of artificial intelligence even more. Turing has contributed by discovering the math behind artificial intelligence and suggesting that machines should use available information since humans can do that already. Finally, he was inspired to make artificial intelligence smart, therefore he spent a large portion of his life with his fellow scientists making intelligent machines, predecessors of what we have now.

As the years went by, popular companies such as Apple and Google realized how many people enjoyed their phones, iPhone and Android, because they proved useful for navigating and interacting with people virtually. Therefore, Apple decided to develop a new AI app, called Siri, for iPhone 4S back in 2011. Later, Google Assistant from Google and Sophia the Robot from Hanson Robotics, a company which is located in Hong Kong, were developed in 2016.

Let us talk about Siri as an example. Originally, it was developed exclusively for iPhones, and after that, in 2012, Siri was implemented for iPads. In addition, in 2016, macOS Sierra, a software that can be installed on MacBooks, started supporting Siri as well. Siri is used everywhere, on tablets, phones, and computers. It is unique in the way of understanding the way you naturally speak, and if it doesn’t understand, it will let you say what you want again. It can even help people with special needs, by displaying both text and voice. Not only does it turn your voice into text, but it can also answer almost everything you ask (Disabled World, 2021)! It also can search on the internet, without you even needing to type a single key! Now, Siri has over half a billion users, and it will only keep going up.

According to James Wu (2017), some AI computers can be controlled by human brains. An Indian neuro engineer, named Rajesh Rao, worked on the Brain-Computer Interface at the University of Washington. The type of machine they developed can detect the nerve signals it senses or the way the brain controls its body to help handicapped people to make prosthetic limbs that can move according to one’s brain, which can help people do more than what they can normally do.

Another example is Sophia, the robot created by Hanson Robotics, which can express emotions, respond to people naturally by being programmed with decision-making, and even produce some jokes (One Click, 2018). as shown in a video from One Click (2018). It is amazing to see how Sophia naturally communicates with her creator, David Hanson, and also how upset Sophia may “feel” about how people theorize the fact she wants to terrorize humans.

Critics from CoinRateCap (2021) say that people are expected to believe in AI, because of how much it can resemble a human. The enhanced Text-to-Speech function with perfect intonation built into AI gives people an impression that AI is a human on the other side. Finally, according to Ulysis Cababan (2021), one of the critics, if anyone asks each other a question, they’d take their phones out and search for the answer. This shows how much people rely on AI because it is so useful but enjoyable too.

Drawbacks of AI

Nobody is perfect. This applies to AI as well. In this paragraph, I will discuss the flaws of AI and what some companies do to fix these issues.

Many people know that AI is a robot written with programs and is not living. However, some may be brainwashed by how stunningly it responds to you, and some responses are hilarious enough to make my brother feel Siri is his girlfriend. However, there are faults in the system. For example, one time, I asked Siri if I could set an alarm at 4:38, and she misunderstood it as 4:38 am even though I meant the time in the afternoon, therefore, she may not confirm with you whether it is right or wrong. Another time, when I ask Siri a question, she sometimes says, “I’m not sure I understand. Could you please try again?” proving that she cannot understand certain things. These are only two of many potential faults an AI may have, so we may need to come up with the correct formatting.

Sophia the Robot, although seemingly flawless, is bound to have some errors as well. Even as the first robot to receive world citizenship, she said she would like to destroy humankind in September 2019. This surprised a lot of people as she said that people should be nice to each other a while back, and some criticism has formed just because she said humanity shall be ended. Another fault that has recently been seen is when Sophia had an emotion emulator installed. Although Sophia seems more like a human, this function is pretty limited. All she does is only smile, show her teeth, or frown, and does not have complex emotions like worriedness. However, the emotion emulator has only recently been added, and there are still functions yet to come, and soon Sophia will act fully like a full-fledged human being.

Lastly, according to Medium (2018), a group of observers has debated whether Sophia has pre-programmed responses and whether she does not make decisions, instead, for example, when she gives her opinion, it is preset to specific answers. On the other hand, there is a Chat-Bot function, which allows her to make her response by context, and she can save her past responses to prepare herself if there is another similar question. However, she may not be able to understand what she is saying and deletes a response if she is programmed to, which may make some conversations a bit confusing, which is another fault.

How close are we to sentient AI?

AI is also appreciated by how real it feels. When you talk to Siri, it feels like you’re talking to an actual person, right? Yes and no. Yes, because of how many decisions Siri can make while talking to you and answering your cheeky questions. No, because of how limited Siri’s list of answers to your questions is. Therefore, I will talk about how close AI is acting like us, real humans, and what limitations this may have.

Firstly, we can use Sophia as an example. She is humanoid and can reply to people’s questions or sentences, due to a program she has received from her creators. As mentioned before, she also is capable of decision-making. This means that if asked a question they would like her opinion on, she can use this to her advantage and not have just a fixed answer, almost as if one person is controlling Sophia and making the robot sentient.

On the contrary, an example is Wall Street Journal’s podcast. The CEO of Google strongly believes AI is sentient, but people have doubts because they believe that it’s simply just a program and the “decisions” are just random choices from their program.

According to Shivali (2022), a software engineer at Google was suspended for claiming that another AI app - LaMDA had become sentient. Because of this, MailOnline spoke to experts to understand whether AI could become 'conscious'. According to Dr. Adrian Weller, Programme Director at The Alan Turing Institute, AI will not be sentient soon, and AI chatbots are trained on large volumes of text but just mimic patterns in human speech when they speak. Chatbots are apps that contain large volumes of text that were inputted by a programmer. Depending on the context, chatbots are processing information from the given text and after, give a relevant reply. This makes them one step closer to being close to a human.

Conclusion

To wrap things up, yes, AI is stunningly close to us. However, there still may be some faults in the system that lets us know that they are not human. Fortunately, people are fixing these problems, and after a while, we will be able to talk to “another human” naturally.

I can’t make up my mind on who to side with on how close we are to sentient AI, but I will say that both sides have equally strong arguments.

In my opinion, even though robots like Sophia are saying that humanity shall terminate, which might scare us, we should report this to their creators so they can shut down the AI for maintenance. For those doubting this solution, here’s a question: would robots say anything to us if they’re shut down? Of course not.

If we would like to enjoy the consciousness of AI, we should put ourselves in the robot’s shoes. How might the robot feel? Can it feel? What may it think? Can it think? After a few decades, the robot will “be” a human. We shall not hesitate to “bring AI to life.” This is only the beginning of AI, and what we can do in a decade may be done by AI in a matter of weeks. We have to consider everything - the history of AI, its pros and cons, and last but not least, our progress so far toward creating another human from scratch. If we keep all these factors in mind, then AI will be more efficient than we can imagine. However, this will take time, most likely for decades, but you should always try something new!

References

• CoinRateCap. “How close did we get to Artificial Intelligence?” NTG, 2021,

https://www.naijatechguide.com/2019/03/how-close-artificial-intelligence.html

• James Wu, Rajesh P N Rao. “How Close Are We Really To Connecting Human Minds To Artificial Intelligence?” GE The Weekend Edition, 2017,

https://www.ge.com/news/reports/close-connecting-human-minds-artificial-intelligence

• OneClick. “Robot Sophia Got Shut Down by her Creator” OneClick, 2018,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SNT7qGqmYfc

• Rockwell Anyoha. “The history of Artificial Intelligence” Harvard University, 2017,

https://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/flash/2017/history-artificial-intelligence/

• Trevor English. “How Close We Are to Fully Self-Sufficient Artificial Intelligence.” Interesting Engineering, 2020,

https://interestingengineering.com/innovation/how-close-we-are-to-fully-self-sufficient-artificial-intelligence