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LISTEN NOW! (Or WATCH FULL PROGRAM!) Can you imagine burying a microphone in your toys, your television, or refrigerator? This is exactly what is being doing with technology right now. So, what are they doing with this new technology? This information is being put into a company called Deep Think. The design is to have computers that have the ability to “think”. This new technology isn’t comparable to Siri, but much more advanced. Imagine pointing your phone at something, asking your phone what it is, and the phone tells you what it is.
In a recent demonstration of Google’s new technology, ‘Google Lens’ when used with smartphones a speaker demonstrates how he used his camera phone to take a picture of text in a different language, which referred to a menu item. When the person he was texting asked what the dish looked like, his technology “assistant” automatically sent a few pictures of the dish. As the speaker explains, “Now notice I never had to type the name of the dish. My Assistant used visual context, and answered my question conversationally.”
The speaker continues to share about coming across a box office marquee of a music concert. When he points his Google Lens at it, his assistant responds with a myriad of options; play music from the band, get tickets, or add this to his music. As they release this new technology, it is now available on the iPhone, they have more news to share. “So, no matter what smartphone you use, you can now get help from the same Smart Assistant throughout the day, at home and on the go.” Sounds simple, right? But, there’s more.
“The new Google Assistant SDK allows any device manufacturer to easily build the Google Assistant in whatever they’re building: speakers, toys, drink mixing robots, whatever crazy device all of you think up, now can incorporate the Google Assistant.”
It’s amazing that less than 10 years ago, the iPhone was released in 2008, and technology as we knew it would never be the same again. This technology is now being released for anyone to use. So, here’s the question. Where is all this information going that is being gathered? Should we be teaching a computer how to think?
It’s great to have technology that solves a vast array of problems. It wasn’t long ago that Ray Kurzweil talked about the predictions of computers being implanted in our brains so that we no longer need to use a keyboard to search the internet, we can simply search the internet via our brains. The convenience of this type of technology is absolutely staggering. Imagine hiring someone who shows up on time, and has no issues in any way. But, we cannot forget that we are dealing with human beings, human beings that God is in love with. God loves our weaknesses and frailties. When we see just how rapidly this type of technology is advancing, we can see the potential hazards that can arise if we do not respond with wisdom.
When some thought this moment would take 10 years, many are having to re-evaluate their predictions. A robot just beat the world’s best player in the Chinese board game of “GO”. This advanced computer is the design of Google’s “Deep Mind” Company. The robot is called “AlphaGo”. As one commentator explains, “The victory of a program over a human in the ancient board game Go, has sparked intrigue and, in some cases, concern. It shows that a machine has approximated human intuition and outsmarted the best human brain in the game.” When looking more closely at this surprising upset, we see how AlphaGo was configured to reach these results. “Instead of using brute force to calculate all the moves it could make, like previous AIs, AlphaGo used reinforcement learning and neuro networks to mimic the learning process of a human brain.” To get an understanding at the complexity of the game AlphaGo, “Keep in mind that the ancient Chinese game, Go, has as many more possible moves than Chess as there are atoms in the entire universe. So, there’s no way of just calculating every possible move on the board. That’s practically impossible.” Are they building technology that has the capability of building intuition?
So what exactly is behind the company that designed this technological wonder, Deep Mind? Google bought out Deep Mind, and now Deep Mind is joining forces with Google for the sole purpose to “Solve Intelligence.”, according to their website. “They want to formulize intelligence, find out what it is, and how it works. The end game is not just to implement this into machines, but also to understand the human brain.” When we look at how the Artificial Intelligence works within Deep Mind, we get a sense of the intensive amount of information it can process, through a method called “reinforcement learning”. Co-creator of Deep Mind, Demis Hassabis, explains.
“So, the way we start off training AlphaGo is by showing it 100,000 games that strong amateurs have played that we’ve downloaded from the internet. And we first get AlphaGo to mimic a human player.” The goal is not to reach the ability of human amateur players, but to surpass that ability. Hassabis continues, ‘After we take that first version that has learned to mimic human play, we then allow it to play itself 30 Million times on our servers. And, using reinforcement learning, the system learns to improve itself incrementally through avoiding its errors, and increasing, and improving its win rate against older versions of itself.’
The creators then demonstrate how they presented simple games, like Breakout, and Space Invaders to the AlphaGo computer. At first, it was shockingly horrible, at best. But, here is where the design of reinforcement learning comes into play. They allow the machine to play the game over night. “You come back in the morning and now it’s superhuman level. So now the machine can play Space Invaders better than any human can.” As some can recall the elementary abilities of games, such as Space Invaders, what about more advanced games that have been developed since then? “At the moment, Deep Mind is currently playing games from the 1970’s and 80’s. But, work is currently being done on more complex 3D games…”
This is quite alarming. After only eight hours of playing a single game, over and over, this machine now has superhuman abilities. Who did we turn to with so many questions before there was Google? The answer is, to God. We just heard Mark Zuckerberg talking about wanting to turn over our health records to technology, and wanting to build some type of utopia where everyone receives a “universal basic income”. Those who are not in the Artificial Intelligence industry may possibly see the potential hazards of the developments. Elon Musk, who IS aware of many of the cutting-edge advancements regarding AI has his own thoughts towards the matter. As he points out, “AI is a fundamental risk to the existence of human civilization.”
It is important for us to remember that each and every one of us are created in the image and likeness of God. Revelation 13 spells out the very essence of what can arise due to these advancements. Regardless of how intelligent technology is made, it still lacks a soul, which is only found in a human being, created by God. We need to be right with the Lord. We need to know and learn His voice so that we can respond and act with wisdom regarding issues such as these. See the full conversation about these advancing technologies, how they are reshaping the culture that we are living in, how it is stunning the experts of AI, where we can find wisdom, and so much more. Also shared in this segment: Beast Economy, knowledge, information, Google, Mark Zuckerberg, Deep Mind, AlphaGo, Elon Musk, Artificial Intelligence, Ray Kurzweil, Space Invaders, Breakout, intelligence, and wisdom. Greg and John shared in this segment.
Screenshot courtesy of Engadget.com
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