Group Progress: Week of March 31

This past weekend, we focused on writing the research proposal. We now have a more defined purpose and idea for our research paper, which is to warn AI developers and users of the potential dangers of intelligent robots, specifically in the social and economic aspects. We feel that we should focus on the following questions, which appear on our research proposal: 

1.  How are robots overtaking manual labor jobs in specific ways?

2.  Is the rate of robot development drastically increasing in comparison to human birth rate?

3.  How close are humans on the brink to becoming overpowered by artificial intelligence?

4.  If artificially intelligent robots do become smart enough to be independent and rebellious, how would humans regain superiority?

5.  In what specific ways will humans be affected by artificial intelligence now and in the future?

We found more examples of artificial intelligence to discuss, such as bionic humans, a chess champion robot, and DARPA robotics. We are having some trouble finding actual scientific journal articles that pertain to our questions, but we will be looking more closely at what keywords we utilize and to perform more refined searches. We hope to complete a rough draft by April 13 at the latest.

Group Progress: Week of March 24

We established a breakdown of what section each person is in charge of writing. Jenna will begin writing the introduction, which shall include background information, a brief history of artificial intelligence, and clearing up any misconceptions. She will also present our thesis, which is that artificially intelligent robots are indeed getting too smart and will have the ability to take over humans. In terms of supporting evidence, we broke it down into three basic discussion sections: economy, social issues, and specific examples of robots. Jenn will discuss how robots have already begun taking over jobs, leaving people out of work; essentially, she will write about how artificially intelligence has affected the economy. Lan will discuss how the ratio between robots and humans is steadily increasing, and how artificial intelligence has affected people socially. I will give specific examples of robots overpowering humans, such as the Kismet and the Japanese humanoid robot. Eric is in charge of the refutation, and he will examine the opinions of the leaders in the field.

Initial Ideas for Group Research Paper

We chose the broad topic of Robotics and quickly narrowed it down to artificial intelligence. Within this topic, we want to pursue the idea of robots becoming too human-like, and to eventually answer the question surrounded by much controversy: are we humans making robots too smart for our own good? 

In the introduction, we will discuss a brief history of artificial intelligence in order to set the scene and give background information. This will lead into our chosen controversial question, where we will argue that robots are increasingly able to overtake humans. 

We discussed two key aspects that relate to this issue and will be utilized as pieces of evidence: how robots are affecting both the individual economic situation and the social atmosphere. First, we agreed that jobs are becoming overtaken by robots even today. As the robots are created to be “smarter”, they can perform more complex tasks and overtake more jobs, leading humans to basically succumb to them. Secondly, we believe that people are having less children nowadays (we obviously need statistics to back our claim), making the robot to human ratio larger and larger. Clearly, if smart robots become the majority, humans are much more easily overpowered. 

Another important factor is that knowledge is more widely available for the general population of the world. People become too reliant on this and the level of laziness increases, making them an easy target for intelligent robots to empower. 

I feel that we are on the right foot with this research paper, even not everyone was present at the meeting. Once we begin communicating more, we will be successfully in completing this paper and presentation.

Research Interests in Collaborative Project

Part 1:

My choices of assignments are, in order:

Neuropsychology: Rather than just plain psychology, I am specifically interested in neuropsychology because anything related to the human brain fascinates me; it's the one interest that has been constant throughout my school years. My goal in becoming a biomedical engineer is to focus in on the neural engineering branch and I believe that learning how behavior, emotion, and cognition are related to brain function. 

Biomedical Engineering: I am majoring in Biomedical Engineering, as I want to combine my passion for medicine and the human body with my love for physics and mathematics. As I stated above, my real interest lies within the branch of neural engineering; my largest desire is to be part of the community that creates devices for neurological disorders. 

Robotics, Computing, AI: Within this topic, I would like to concentrate on: robotics related to biomedical engineering or how artificial intelligence will impact the future. I'm particularly interested in how surgery can be revolutionized by robotics and the programming behind such a machine. Also, I'm interested in experts' opinions about whether artificial intelligence is a viable option for the future of humanity.

Part 2:

I found the following articles on my three topics:

Neuropsychology: http://psychcentral.com/news/2013/02/28/autistic-brain-networks-are-connected-differently/52056.html

This article discusses research that claims that autistic brains are wired differently from so-called “typical” or “healthy” brains. By comparing EEG readings from two control groups and two groups of autistic children, the research showed that children with autism have more short-range connections within different brain regions, but fewer long-range connections across the brain. Though this article was basically a summary of the research rather than a more detailed journal article, I found it extremely interesting as I have always been seeking answers to why and how autism develops ever since I first read about it in middle school.

Biomedical Engineering:  http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/02/130228093829.htm

This article from today (2/28/13) literally made my jaw drop. A group of neural engineers have successfully “developed a fully implantable and rechargeable wireless brain sensor capable of relaying real-time broadband signals.” What’s even more astonishing is that this device runs on less than 100 milliwatts of power. This is just amazing because this is basically the first of its kind in the brain-computer interface field. It has been successful in animal testing; therefore, it most likely enter the human testing phase. I am extremely excited about this ground-breaking product; this is exactly the kind of thing I strongly desire to work on.

Robotics, Computing, AI: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2012/11/121119-biobot-hearts-robots-cells-health-science-disease/

This article discusses a bio-robot that runs on rat heart cells rather than on plain electricity. The contraction of the heart cells cause the body of the biorobot to move forward less than an inch per second. Why even create robots out of both synthetic and biological material? The engineers that work on these kinds of projects believe that their products have abilities that purely mechanical robots do not possess. Engineers have not been successfully in creating synthetic biological materials, so they have ingeniously decided to fuse biology with man-made material.

John Slaughter: Changing the Face of Engineering

John Slaughter presents two different ideas in his brief article. First, he states that no barriers should exist in becoming an engineer, in the sense that women and other minority groups should be strongly encouraged to purse that particular field. Consequently, the gap of these underrepresented groups will be filled, which will produce diversity and promote the growth of engineering. Secondly, he argues that the engineering curriculum should be drastically altered by the addition of more required liberal arts courses. This will increase each aspiring engineer’s appreciation for the humanities and will prevent him from becoming stereotypical narrow-minded engineer, since he will be exposed to many different ideas through the humanities. 

In Slaughter’s article, it is not clearly stated how those two arguments correlate with each other, but the two ideas should be followed in today’s society since they both produce the rich idea of diversity. Each person thinks in a different way, and the thinking process greatly differs from man to woman, from one culture to another. Therefore, in order to breed new and diverse thoughts that will generate a ground-breaking product, there should be engineers that represent very different backgrounds.  

The addition of more liberal arts within the engineering curriculum should also be encouraged, because creativity is more likely to flourish when a person is exposed to disparate fields other than his major.  Creativity will breed an open mind, which is a crucial trait for the future engineer, as it fosters understanding of new concepts and facilitates better problem-solving skills. When creativity is stressed, the individual is challenged to think to the maximum. One can memorize data to his heart’s desire, but without ingenuity, he cannot create anything new. As the prospective engineer learns not only math and science but also literature and history, he will gain different perspectives of the world and thus will gain more creative thought, which will clearly assist in the process of designing better and original products.