“It’s just a dumb machine!” I’ve heard people say this. The contrast implicit in this statement is with the intelligence of a human. Sometimes this intelligence refers to cognitive capabilities such as abstraction, at other times it might refer to characteristics such as creativity or thoughtfulness or kindness.
Today dumb machines are often contrasted with smart machines which are further compared to intelligent machines. What makes a machine dumb, smart, or intelligent?
I think of the temperature controller in my electric iron. When electricity passes through a bimetallic strip and it reaches a certain temperature, the electric iron switches itself off. The bimetallic strip is a rectangle consisting of two different metallic strips laid one on top of the other and mechanically joined. Each of the two metals expands at a different rate with rising temperature. As a result, one strip grows slightly longer than the other. Since the two strips are bonded together, the longer strip must bend. The bend in the bimetallic strip causes the electric contact to break, and the iron turns off. Is the bimetallic strip intelligent? smart? dumb?
I think of another scenario. I imagine entering a room, picking up a remote control, pointing it to the air conditioner (AC), and pressing a button. Presto, the air conditioner turns on. I can adjust the temperature by pressing a few buttons Up or Down. The machine even shows me the temperature I have set. Is the air conditioner intelligent, or smart or dumb?
Now if I am able to enter a room and say “Hi AC, turn yourself on, and set the temperature at 25 degrees C” and the AC follows my command, is the AC intelligent, smart or dumb?
It does not end here. Let’s say someone else enters my room and says “Hi AC, turn yourself on, and set temperature at 25 degrees C”. The AC does not follow the command. This is because the AC realizes that the entrant is not an authorized person, because it does not recognize the face as a member of the household. Intelligent? Smart? Dumb?
Finally, I am asleep in my bed room. The AC is on, temperature at 25 degrees C. A hail storm is raging outside for several hours. The AC is monitoring my face temperature. As the outside temperature cools due to the hail storm, the AC slowly increases the temperature in minute steps 25.1, 25.2…..26.3 etc. I continue to sleep soundly. Now is the AC intelligent, smart or dumb?
My contention is that we need a consensus of what intelligence means in order to figure out how to implement intelligent behavior in machines. Alan Turing defined a test of intelligence in a machine as “the machine’s performance being indistinguishable from human behavior”. For an electric iron that turns itself off at a certain temperature, I am hard pressed to say that it will pass the Turing test. The air conditioner which responds to commands from the remote controller may be called less dumb, in other words, a smarter machine. If it recognizes my face and allows only authorized persons to change the temperature, then hmm, it has definitely done something which humans do, and is probably somewhat intelligent. If it exhibits a “care-giving” ability, and realizes that with the outside ambient cooling faster than normal, it would be advisable to raise the temperature setting a wee bit to ensure my comfort, it in all likelihood is exhibiting more intelligence.
As we strive for “human-like” abilities in machines, we will want to make machines that are creative, kind, thoughtful. The question I leave you to ponder is whether making machines human-like will end up showing us how good a machine human beings are?
PRAVAK 