Page 39 - Monocle Quarterly Journal Vol 3 Issue 2 Spring

organisations, the terms “machine learning” and “deep learning” are commonly used, providing a more accurate description of their goals than “artificial intelligence” provides.
But even learning is no easy feat. In July 2018, AI company DeepMind provided some insight on how far the learning abilities of AI technology have advanced, by developing a test for abstract reasoning that was based on pattern-recognition questions from a typical human IQ test. The questions feature several rows of images, with the final image in each sequence missing. The test- taker is required to determine what the last image in each sequence should be, by detecting patterns in the images preceding it. The pattern could be related to the number of images, the colour, the shape, or their placement. DeepMind trained AI systems on these types of questions using a program that can generate unique image sequences. The AI systems were then tested, with some image sequences that were the same as in the
training set, and some that had never been seen by the system before. And it quickly became clear that whilst the computers did fairly well at identifying the missing image when they had seen the pattern before, they were unable to extrapolate this prior information to determine the image in new patterns. This rang true even when the test sequence only varied slightly from the training sequence – such as when dark-coloured images were used instead of light-coloured images.
Although the initial goal of AI may have been to replicate human intelligence in its entirety, the enormity of such a task has become resoundingly clear. Human intelligence is not a stable idea – despite our best attempts, we still cannot agree on exactly what it is or how to test if a person possesses it. The only thing we seem to be able to agree on is that intelligence encompasses the ability to learn. And even in this singular aspect, machines currently still pale in comparison to humans.
2.3 FRANKENSTEIN WAS A HIPPIE
One of the most famous German legends of all time is a story about an erudite named Faust. Having excelled in all areas of learning, Faust becomes bored and frustrated by the limits of his knowledge and is tempted by a demon called Mephistopheles to make a perilous deal with the devil. Faust agrees to trade his soul in the afterlife for infinite knowledge and power whilst he is alive. The disastrous outcomes of his willingness to commit himself to eternal damnation in exchange for a higher understanding of earthly matters differ from one version of the story to another. But in every form – from medieval English playwright Christopher Marlowe’s The Tragical History of the Life and Death of Dr Faustus (1592) to German writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s two-part play, Faust (1808) – Faust’s tale remains a cautionary one, warning people of the tragic
...Faust’s tale remains a cautionary one, warning people
of the tragic downfall that awaits when moral integrity
is sacrificed in the pursuit of intellectual ambition.
downfall that awaits when moral integrity is sacrificed in the pursuit of intellectual ambition.
The moral of the story is one that is reiterated in Mary Shelley’s famous 1818 tale of Viktor Frankenstein and his monster. From a young age, Viktor displays an insatiable thirst for knowledge, but to his father’s dismay, this leads to a fascination with the mystical philosophies of alchemy. Whilst advancing his learning at university,
FRANKENSTEIN WAS A HIPPIE
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