The future end of football history: Team Human
Posted: 11/07 -10 Filed under: English | Tags: AI, football, robot 2 Comments »In 1997 the IBM computer Deep Blue beat Garry Kasparov in chess. In a few years, we might have enough computing power to challenge humans players in other games and sports. Like football: On the one side, Team Human, made up of the best players in the world for each position; on the other, 11 soft but clever Japanese robots.
This might have a uniting effect on us.
According to Futurist Ray Kurzweil, advances in computational power will continue to increase so that, by 2044 computer “thinking” will surpass human “thinking.” While I agree that in certain respects this seems likely, I see advanced computer “thinking” as largely confined to the areas of number crunching and parameter maintenance rather than creative or synthetic endeavours. As for kinesthetic possibities, “robots” are much further behind animal (including human) capabilities – for the foreseeable future “robots” with any “advanced kinesthetic capacities” will be engineered to “specialize” in a vary narrow range of performance capabilities – very limited degrees of motion and maneuverability. Besides, the only credible rationale for replacing humans with robots is when the tasks are so dangerous or demanding that placing people at risk is excessive and can be avoided. I could be wrong about all of this, but I doubt it!
We will not have to wait for the development of true AI to have a serious challenge for our Team Human: Robots with the high level dexterity needed have been demonstrated in the lab already, and the tactical understanding needed is not that difficult a task, as can be seen from the realism of commercial football games. My guess is we’ll see matches with humans vs. robots being played in labs in just a couple of years.
To your general point: I don’t think humans will ever be replaced by wholly artificial beings. Rather, we will replace organs within our bodies, and augment the rest. If AI will ever develop to surpass human intelligence, it will take over control from within, not from without. We will be along for the ride to the next step in the history of life, not excluded or exterminated.
I’m just sharing my assumptions, just like you. It’s not a very easy to argue well against each other on this issue.