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.