Remembering Alan Turing on his Birthday

Alan Turing, who is considered as the father of modern AI, was an English mathematician, a computer scientist and a logician. He was the one who proposed The Imitation Game, a test that examined whether machines can think, and further led to his development of the Turing Test that assesses a machine’s ability to produce intelligence and behave in a way indistinguishable from that of a human.

Source: How stuff works

Today, on his birthday, while reading of his contribution how it shaped modern computing, I felt myself trapped in a different kind of thought spiral.

There was a time when robots had been the stuff of only fantasy and fictional films, but notable developments in the field of Artificial Intelligence have made it possible to expect more of those futuristic task-oriented machines seen around as a part of our modern lifestyle.

While AI is changing and will change the way our society functions, does it bother you ever what level of risk can we accept in our civil liberties, human rights, and pursuits of comfort?

As the field of AI has evolved from the idea that human intelligence, one of the core fundamentals of our identity as a species, can be replicated by a machine; I sometimes feel perturbed by a host of issues that probably are yet to fully address. 

• If machines can think, will those be really conscious thoughts? 
• What if machines overtake the abilities of the human brain and technological growth becomes uncontrollable and irreversible, resulting in Singularity?
• Furthermore, what is the likelihood of occurrence of such events against human civilization?
• What if a legal issue is raised by someone arising due to an application of AI? By the time the legal system would process and resolve the issue, a new and possibly unprecedented issue might arise because technology evolves faster than the law can keep up.
• Yet another concern is there are chance that AI might breach fundamental rights in absence of global regulatory standards.

Probably ethical dilemmas will remain an unsolved mystery. Would love to know your thoughts on future of AI.  

This post is a part of Blogchatter Half Marathon.