Human intuition and artificial intelligence

Twenty years ago, then world chess champion Garry Kasparov lost a match to Deep Blue, a supercomputer designed by IBM. This result caused a sensation at the time since Kasparov had been world champion for over a decade and had defeated Deep Blue in a similar encounter only the previous year.

In a recent TED talk from the TED2017 conference, Kasparov looked back at this historic event and at the same time reflected on the relationship between human beings and well-programmed machines.

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Kasparov noted that the theme of humans and machines has a long history in literature and film, though it is normally depicted in terms of competition or even violent conflict. Yet, as Kasparov pointed out, his own defeat by Deep Blue was more a tribute to the human programmers than the machine itself.

"Don't fear intelligent machines"

Rather than speculate over definitions of intelligence, Kasparov suggests a more important question is the attitude we as humans adopt towards such machines.

In the past, machines took over jobs formerly carried out by manual workers. Nowadays they are used equally as much in other spheres associated more with university graduates. No area of professional life is immune from technological progress so, far from trying somehow to conquer machines, humans would be better advised to seek ways of using them to solve more demanding tasks.

Essentially, machines process instructions and perform calculations in an objective manner; humans, on the other hand, have passion, understanding and a sense of purpose. Thus machines can improve our lives, provided we know how best to utilise them to our own ends. In other words, far from fearing the latest technological advances, we should embrace and fine-tune them so they may best meet our requirements.

TED talk

Play the entire TED talk entitled "Don't fear intelligent machines. Work with them“ (in English with subtitles in other languages) or read the transcript.

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