The New AI Is Not the Old AI

Just when I was getting comfortable with the reemergence of the old AI, as in "artificial intelligence" (see Michael Swaine's article AI: It's OK Again), I learn that the new AI is "assistive intelligence."

According to Nigel Shadbolt, who is president of the British Computer Society and professor of Artificial Intelligence in the School of Electronics and Computer Science at the University of Southampton, the new AI -- assistive intelligence -- is different than the old AI -- artificial intelligence. "Rather than being conscious brains in a box," says Shadbolt, "they are in fact small pieces of adaptive and flexible software that help drive our cars, diagnose disease and provide opponents in computer games."

From Shadbolt's perspective, what's driving the new AI are developments in the speed and power of computers, the emergence of the World Wide Web, and a deeper understanding of human and animal intelligence is producing a different but no less exciting future.

To illustrate, Shadbolt points to powerful computing systems that can beat the world’s best chess players, translate documents on the Web from one language to another, and build robots that hoover the house. "There will be micro-intelligences all around us -- systems that are very good and adaptive at particular tasks, and we will be immersed in environments stuffed full of helpful devices."

He goes on to say that "What is emerging now is a digital ecosystem involving lots of simple systems which connect millions of complex ones -- humans! And when you have millions of people using smart software you start to see really interesting properties -- forms of Collective Intelligence, such as Wikipedia, which is the communal expression of a great deal of our encyclopaedic knowledge. The Web will be smart because it will have assistive intelligence connecting human intelligence together."

-- Jonathan Erickson

Posted by Jon Erickson at 10:37 AM  Permalink