Are people turning into machines, or machines turning into people?

In mid-April 2015, Global Sources held the Mobile Electronics Show in Hong Kong, attracting more than 2,800 companies from 21 countries. At the exhibition, the most attention is the smart hardware - from wearable devices to smart chopping boards, from smart suitcases to drones, from smart cameras to lifelike humanoid robots, it has almost reached "you can't think of it, without them." to the point of ".

In recent years, with the breakthrough of computer hardware performance and the rapid development of computing technology, the speed and quality of information processing have been greatly improved, artificial intelligence There are continuous innovations and breakthroughs in basic research, human brain research, network integration, 3D intelligent printing and other fields.

"Intelligent products are still in their infancy, just like hybrid cars back then," said Jong Lee, CEO of Hanson Robotics.

Hanson Robotics made a big splash at this mobile electronics exhibition. The appearance of a humanoid robot named "Han" is very similar to a real person. "He" will chat with human beings. Real-time capture of the age, gender and mood of the conversation object, and express your emotions through rich facial expressions.

On Hanson Robotics' website, they use "robots with personality" to position their smart robots. Talking with such a highly anthropomorphic robot up close to whether the other party drinks beer or not can make people feel a lot of complicated feelings, whether it is anticipation or fear, or both. Is it very close to the scene where humans live with intelligent hardware and intelligent robots like the one described in science fiction movies?

Don't think too much, machines can't deceive humans

Whether it is a smart bracelet or a smart robot, in fact, they are just different shells, they have a common core - artificial intelligence. In the eyes of some scientists and industry insiders, the smart bracelet that is still a "chicken rib" product today is not simple, it is a prelude to an unimaginably powerful artificial intelligence in the future.

At the beginning of the year, an article about artificial intelligence was circulated wildly on social media, roughly meaning that human development has reached an exponential stage of progress, and we are just standing in the revolutionary stage. On the edge of life change, although the current development of artificial intelligence is still in the state of "weak artificial intelligence", according to this development speed, once a certain node is broken through, "strong artificial intelligence" that is as smart as humans and "strong artificial intelligence" that is more intelligent than humans Smarter "super-artificial intelligence" may soon be realized.

How do we judge whether a computer is weak artificial intelligence or strong artificial intelligence?

To answer this question we have to talk about the "Turing Test". Alan Mathison Turing, the protagonist of last year's Hollywood TV series The Imitation Game, is a genius mathematician who was chemically castrated for being gay. For our generation, his most important identity should be "the father of computer science" and "the father of artificial intelligence". The Turing test was proposed by him on how to judge whether a computer is truly "intelligent".

The Turing test uses a question-and-answer model, in which a human communicates via a typewriter with two subjects, one of which is a machine. If through some series of questions, 30% of people can't tell whether it is a human or a machine that communicates with them, then the computer has passed the Turing test, which means that it has reached a state comparable to the human brain.

Last year, news came out that at the "2014 Turing Test" conference held by the Royal Society in the United Kingdom, a computer successfully deceived humans, making people think that it was with a 13-year-old boy. call. But then the news was denied again, because the one that "deceived" humans was nothing but a chat program that simulated human conversations, and was not "thinking" at all.

Three directions for the development of intelligent robots

Why are so many companies investing in intelligent hardware? A vulgar guess can be reduced to "for the money". For example, ordinary pedometers may only sell for ten or twenty yuan in the Huaqiangbei market, but "smart" bracelets can sell for hundreds or even thousands of yuan. And another explanation that is a little higher might be "to make the world a better place". Of course, whether it is for making money or for feelings, an iron law of smart hardware is that the customer experience must be good. Otherwise, no matter how awesome the product, the best concept, and the best company, it's still possible to go the same way as Google Glass and those smart products that once slid across the sky like a comet.

Regarding how service-oriented machines can make people "experience" well, looking at the current success of various products and research, there are generally three ways:

Replacing the human type

The primary representative: sweeping robot

The ultimate representative of the robot: Terminator

There is a saying that It is said that the progress of this world is driven by lazy people. This sentence is not without reason. In the age of underdeveloped technology, only slave owners or wealthy people can let others do the work for them. Now, this practice is either illegal or increasingly expensive. The development of science and technology is gradually promoting the equal rights of "lazy rights", so that the sweeping robot sweeps the floor, the window cleaning robot cleans the window, and the cooking robot cooks vegetables, and finally there is an all-round robot to help people finish all the work, and even, Even sex | partner can act as. Don't think this is a joke, AT&T Bell Labs in the United States has launched a real sex | love robot Roxy, "she" is 170 cm tall, weighs 27 kg, can change skin and hair color, and has flexible limbs , priced at $9,000.

Feature Enhanced

Initial Rep: Wearables

Ultimate Rep: Iron Man Suit

This type of intelligent hardware does not take the route of replacement, but improves the quality of human life by expanding and enhancing the original capabilities of human beings. For example, the simplest smart bracelet can monitor body temperature, heartbeat, blood pressure, etc. by working with a mobile phone, basically completing the "seeing, hearing, asking, and hearing" that could only be achieved by professional doctors in the past. Another example is various smart glasses and holographic glasses, which can see more information than the naked eye in reality, and use technology to make people "see the essence through phenomena".

Mechanical plug-in type

Primary representative: intelligent prosthesis

Ultimate representative: Avatar

At this stage, people can already control some simple machines with their brains. In 2014, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) officially approved a medical device called the DEKA Arm System (DEKA Arm System). activity signals and transmit these electrical signals to a computer processor in the prosthesis, which further translates the signals into limb activity.

Imagine that with the further improvement of this technology, prosthetics will become more and more realistic and flexible. If combined with biotechnology, perhaps one day in the future, humans can even be easily replaced. "malfunctioning" body parts and organs | And the ultimate form will probably be like Avatar, the real body is asleep, but the brain can manipulate the body to live in reality like a real person.