What alchemy and astrology can teach AI researchers
AI researchers and engineers have spent a lot of effort trying to build machines that look like humans and operate largely independently. Those tempting dreams have distracted many of them from where the real progress is already happening: in systems that enhance – rather than replace – human capabilities. To accelerate the shift to new ways of thinking, AI designers and developers could take some lessons from the missteps of past researchers.For example, alchemists, like Isaac Newton, pursued ambitious goals such as converting lead to gold, creating a panacea to cure all diseases, and finding potions for immortality. While these goals are alluring, the charlatans pursuing them may have secured princely financial backing that would have been better used developing modern chemistry.
Equally optimistically, astrologers believed they could understand human personality based on birthdates and predict future events by studying the positions of the stars and planets. These promises over the past thousand years often received kingly endorsement, possibly slowing the work of those who were adopting scientific methods that eventually led to astronomy.
As alchemy and astrology evolved, the participants became more deliberate and organized – what might now be called more scientific – about their studies. That shift eventually led to important findings in chemistry, such as those by Lavoisier and Priestley in the 18th century. In astronomy, Kepler and Newton himself made significant findings in the 17th and 18th centuries.
A similar turning point is coming for artificial intelligence. Bold innovators are putting aside tempting but impractical dreams of anthropomorphic designs and excessive autonomy. They focus on systems that restore, rely on, and expand human control and responsibility.
Updating early AI dreams
Back in the 1950s, artificial intelligence researchers pursued big goals, such as human-level computational intelligence and machine consciousness. Even during the past 20 years some researchers worked toward the “singularity” fantasy of machines that are superior to humans in every way. These dreams succeeded in attracting attention from sympathetic journalists and financial backing from government and industry. But to me, those aspirations still seem like counterproductive wishful thinking and B-level science fiction.
Even the dream of creating a human-shaped robot that acted like a person has lasted for more than 50 years. Honda’s near-life-size Asimo and the web-based news reader Ananova got a lot of media attention. Hanson Robotics’ Sophia even received Saudi Arabian citizenship. But they have little commercial future.
By contrast, down-to-earth user-centered designs for information search, e-commerce sites, social media and smartphone apps have been wild successes. There is good reason that Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google and Microsoft are some of the world’s biggest companies – they all use more functional, if less glamorous, types of AI.
Today’s cellphones feature speech recognition, face recognition and automated translation, which all use artificial intelligence technologies. These functions increase human control and give users more options, without the deception and theatrics of a humanoid robot.
Yielding control
Efforts that pursue advanced forms of computer autonomy are also dangerous. When developers assume their machines will function correctly, they often shortchange interfaces that would allow human users to quickly take control when something goes wrong.
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