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Why China’s communist party may regret developing true AI technology

AI is much different than machine learning where a system is intellectually confined and chooses from a set of algorithms to solve a problem

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The level of programming and algorithm development that a future AI system would needs to make a split second decision like the one Sully made to land on the Hudson River is unfathomable with current technology. Photo: AFP
Peter Guy

Artificial intelligence and machine learning or just plain computing have become such conflated ideas that they are not only misleading investors and but worrying the general public. The walls between the science fiction and reality are steep, but the implications and outcomes are real and daunting.

AI is basically about a computing system being smart or sentient like a human being, being able to learn and consider moral and ethical dilemmas. It is much different than machine learning where a system is intellectually confined and chooses from a set of algorithms to solve a problem.

AI is far more complex and difficult to achieve with today’s state of technology. Teaching computers to think and understand the world the same way a human brain does is a nearly impossible endeavour.

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Perhaps the best way to illustrate the delicate and furious challenges that AI must meet is to use the Clint Eastwood film Sully: Miracle on the Hudson, which is about the actual heroic efforts of US Airways pilots Captain Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger and First Officer Jeff Skiles to safely land in New York’s Hudson River after its engines were struck by birds.

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