Chapter 1

Delving into What AI Means

IN THIS CHAPTER

Defining AI and its history

Using AI for practical tasks

Seeing through AI hype

Connecting AI with computer technology

Common apps, such as Google Assistant, Alexa, and Siri, have many people using artificial intelligence (AI) daily without even thinking about it. Productivity and creative apps such as ChatGPT, Synesthesia, and Gemini help us focus on the content rather than on how to get there. The media floods our entire social environment with so much information and disinformation that many people see AI as a kind of magic (which it most certainly isn't). So, the best way to start this book is to define what AI is, what it isn't, and how it connects to computers today.

Defining the Term AI

Before you can use a term in any meaningful way, you must have a definition for it. After all, if nobody agrees on a meaning, the term has none; it's just a collection of characters. Defining the idiom (a term whose meaning isn't clear from the meanings of its constituent elements) is especially important with technical terms that have received more than a little press coverage at various times and in various ways.

Saying that AI is an artificial intelligence doesn't tell you anything meaningful, which is why people have so many discussions and disagreements over this term. Yes, you can argue that what occurs is artificial, not having come from a natural source. However, the intelligence part is, at best, ambiguous. Even if you don't necessarily agree with the definition of AI as it appears in the sections that follow, this book uses AI according to that definition, and knowing it will help you follow the text more easily.

Discerning intelligence

People define intelligence in many different ways. However, you can say that intelligence involves certain mental activities composed of the following activities:

• Learning: Having the ability to obtain and process new information
• Reasoning: Being able to manipulate information in various ways
• Understanding: Considering the result of information manipulation
• Grasping truths: Determining the validity of the manipulated information
• Seeing relationships: Divining how validated data interacts with other data
• Considering meanings: Applying truths to particular situations in a manner consistent with their relationship
• Separating fact from belief: Determining whether the data is adequately supported by provable sources that can be demonstrated to be consistently valid

The activities list could easily grow quite long, but even this list is relatively prone to interpretation by anyone who accepts it as viable. As the list implies, however, intelligence often follows a process that a computer system can mimic as part of a simulation:

1. Set a goal (the information to process and the desired output) based on needs or wants.
2. Assess the value of any known information in support of the goal.
3. Gather additional information that could support the goal. The emphasis here is on information that could support the goal rather than on information you know will support the goal.
4. Manipulate the data such that it achieves a form consistent with existing information.
5. Define the relationships and truth values between existing and new information.
6. Determine whether the goal is achieved.
7. Modify the goal in light of the new data and its effect on the probability of success.
8. Repeat Steps 2 through 7 as needed until the goal is achieved (found true) or the possibilities for achieving it are exhausted (found false).

Even though you can create algorithms and provide access to data in support of this process within a computer, a computer's capability to achieve intelligence is severely limited. For example, a computer is incapable of understanding anything because it relies on machine processes to manipulate data using pure math in a strictly mechanical fashion. Likewise, computers can't easily separate truth from mistruth (as described in Chapter 2 of this book). In fact, no computer can fully implement any of the mental activities in the earlier list that describes intelligence.

As part of deciding what intelligence actually involves, categorizing intelligence is also helpful. Humans don't use just one type of intelligence; rather, they rely on multiple intelligences to perform tasks. Howard Gardner, a Harvard psychologist, has defined a number of these types of intelligence (for details, see the article "The Theory of Multiple Intelligences" from Project Zero at Harvard University, https://pz.harvard.edu/resources/the-theory-of-multiple-intelligences). Knowing them helps you relate them to the kinds of tasks a computer can simulate as intelligence. (See Table 1-1 for a modified version of these intelligences with additional description.)

TABLE 1-1 The Kinds of Human Intelligence and How AIs Simulate Them

Type

Simulation Potential

Human Tools

Description

Bodily kinesthetic

Moderate to high

Specialized equipment and real-life objects

Body movements, such as those used by a surgeon or a dancer, require precision and body awareness. Robots commonly use this kind of intelligence to perform repetitive tasks, often with higher precision than humans, but sometimes with less grace. It's essential to differentiate between human augmentation, such as a surgical device that provides a surgeon with enhanced physical ability, and true independent movement. The former is simply a demonstration of mathematical ability in that it depends on the surgeon for input.

Creative

None

Artistic output, new patterns of thought, inventions, new kinds of musical composition

Creativity is the act of developing a new pattern of thought that results in unique output in the form of art, music, or writing. A truly new kind of product is the result of creativity. An AI can simulate existing patterns of thought and even combine them to create what appears to be a unique presentation but is in reality just a mathematically based version of an existing pattern. To create, an AI would need to possess self-awareness, which would require intrapersonal intelligence.

Interpersonal

Low to moderate

Telephone, audioconferencing, videoconferencing, writing, computer conferencing, email

Interacting with others occurs at several levels. The goal of this form of intelligence is to obtain, exchange, give, or manipulate information based on the experiences of others. Computers can answer basic questions because of keyword input, not because they understand the question. The intelligence occurs while obtaining information, locating suitable keywords, and then giving information based on those keywords. Cross-referencing terms in a lookup table and then acting on the instructions provided by the table demonstrates logical intelligence, not interpersonal intelligence.

Intrapersonal

None

Books, creative materials, diaries, privacy, time

Looking inward to understand one's own interests and then setting goals based on those interests is now a human-only kind of intelligence. As machines, computers have no desires, interests, wants, or creative abilities. An AI processes numeric input using a set of algorithms and provides an output; it isn't aware of anything it does, nor does it understand anything it does.

Linguistic (often divided into oral, aural, and written)

Low

Games, multimedia, books, voice recorders, spoken words

Working with words is an essential tool for communication because spoken and written information exchange is far faster than any other form. This form of intelligence includes understanding oral, aural, and written input, managing the input to develop an answer, and providing an understandable answer as output. Discerning just how capable computers are in this form of intelligence is difficult in light of AIs such as ChatGPT because it's all too easy to create tests in which the AI produces nonsense answers.

Logical mathematical

High (potentially higher than humans)

Logic games, investigations, mysteries, brainteasers

Calculating results, performing comparisons, exploring patterns, and considering relationships are all areas in which computers now excel. When you see a computer defeat a human on a game show, this is the only form of intelligence you're seeing, out of eight kinds of intelligence. Yes, you may see small bits of other kinds of intelligence, but this is the focus. Basing an assessment of human-versus-computer intelligence on just one area isn't a good idea.

Naturalist

None

Identification, exploration, discovery, new tool creation

Humans rely on the ability to identify, classify, and...