Page 47 - Monocle Quarterly Journal Vol 3 Issue 2 Spring

a general theory of language acquisition, rather than to describe a particular biological structure. But, if AI research and development is to replicate one of the crucial pillars of intelligence – the acquisition of natural language – it would, in any event, have to do it without human intervention in the form of scripts or templates. Whether universal grammar exists or not, AI would still have to find a way to address not only the transfer of content, but the ongoing negotiation of the social function that language performs – with all the verbal and physical nuances and contextual variations that affect the meaning of the words we utter. Until AI can achieve this, it has not demonstrated artificial intelligence at all – no matter how many Chess or Go champions it beats.
In May 2018, Bloomberg Businessweek published an article entitled “These tech revolutions are further away than you think.” The list included a practical use for blockchain technology, the mainstream use of augmented reality, the death of cable television, the full-scale
implementation of renewable energy sources, total data portability, and fully robotic factories. Natural language processing was, however, curiously absent from the list.
...it is highly improbable that machines will be capable of
the distinctly human capability to acquire and use language
THE IMPORTANCE OF LYING
effectively in the near future.
Given the limitations that virtual assistants and chatbots have displayed in performing even the most menial communication-based tasks, it seems clear that whilst vast amounts of data and highly refined neural network structures may threaten jobs, entire industries, and even our values, it is highly improbable that machines will be capable of the distinctly human capability to acquire and use language effectively in the near future.
2.5 THE IMPORTANCE OF LYING
In the pursuit of constructing artificial intelligence, it would clearly be an assumption on behalf of AI researchers, and indeed the general public, that the qualities of intelligence would include rational thinking, problem solving, and the ability to divine general truths from data and a series of facts. This would be true, for example, in the construction of an accurate historical description of what had led up to a particular event, such as the 2007/2008 financial crisis. Ironically, it may in fact be this very quality of veracity expected from artificial intelligence that may make machine learning distinct from a very specific and important quality in human beings, and therefore make it impossible for machines to actually achieve true intelligence. That quality, unique to and inherent in humans, is the ability to lie.
The ability to lie, or to construct a fictional story,
according to American cognitive scientist Elizabeth Loftus, is an important capability that is directly involved in the way we find meaning in a complex world. It is also integral to how we store this meaning in the form of reconstructive memory. And whilst this fictional construction of memories serves a positive role in the healthy mental functioning of the individual creating them, these “false memories”, as Loftus calls them, can in certain instances be detrimental in determining the course of someone else’s life – as was the case with the falsely accused Steve Titus.
In the early evening of 12 October 1980, on the desolate outskirts of Seattle, Washington, a teenage girl was raped. Upon being questioned by the police about the details of the incident, the young victim described the rapist as a twenty-something white male, about
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