As you know I am an avid follower of technological progress, a result of being a computer programmer and having an all-consuming interest in artificial intelligence (AI).
The bad news for us futurists is that making a machine that can emulate the human brain is certainly something that is beyond our current capabilities. Sure we can make an expert system where we programme all the possibilities into what is still a calculating engine which can work out from these rules the correct actions. We can programme an aeroplane to land itself, which it does by taking measurements from sensors and applying the rules we taught it. Machines can make these decisions much much faster than we can but they are still following strict programmes.
No matter how much processing power we can now build, we are nowhere near the brain. The fastest computers are now operating at speeds of about 10,000 trillion (1016) calculations a second which seems a huge number but the average human brain is factors above that with an estimate made in Japan a couple of years ago of around (1022) calculations a second. It has been postulated that if we could build a processor that had the processing power of our brains, it would become self aware and consequently able to formulate its own rules? Now that would be the scary time and so whatever we do we must never allow it to control its own off switch.
As of now the best we have is expert systems and they are making a huge mark in the field of medicine. Computers have been programmed with all the medical knowledge we have and this enables us to a large extent to go online to WebMD and the like, type in our symptoms and get a diagnosis which in many cases is correct. They are certainly useful as a first stage in determining if we need to go to the doctor or not, and in countries where you have to pay for the doctor they can save you a lot of money. But joy of joy I have heard today of a new expert system which has the ability, by bringing costs down, to allow us all to access a service that we normally cannot afford. I am talking about the law. The cost of lawyers is so high that it means that most of us cannot protect our rights because we just can’t afford it. A new system built by law students in the UK has been tested and shown that it can predict how a judge will rule on a case more accurately than trained legal researchers. That is very important because if we know we are going to lose before we start then we do not waste our money. If the system tells us that we are going to win then we can risk the expense or a lawyer will take on the case on a pro bono basis and so we will have access to justice that we previously could not risk.
There is one more benefit. If the expert system makes lots of lawyers redundant I’m not going to lose any sleep over it, are you?