If we had the power to create a species that was like us but only much smarter and creative, would we be considered gods? I ask because we are in the process of doing the same, actually.
It’s not a new species per say, but yes, we are creating something that is intelligent, could potentially think on its own and make decisions independently of us and also, is creative and increasingly getting better at it.
I am talking about artificial intelligence, one of my favorite topics to talk about. AI is nothing new and you probably know all about it since it is slowly but surely making its way into our lives in our phones, in our cars, in our computers, and a lot more places and ways.
I, as well as most people, always thought that even if AI gets really advanced one day (to the point it is smarter than us), it will never be able to possess something that we always thought was unique to us humans, and that is creativity. It seems we might have been wrong about that too.
In the past year or so, there have been so many examples of what AI is truly capable of that it has been simply unbelievable but what has been really most impressive is its ability to create art, music and even writings.
In fact, just about a year ago, the world got to witness an entire album composed by an AI called Aiva which you can listen for yourself on Soundtrack. Aiva is so good that its music is being used as soundtracks in movies, in advertisements and even video games and is the first AI ever to officially gain the status of a composer.
Another example comes in the form of paintings made by an AI system after observing and learning from thousands of paintings made by humans. Now, the system has become so good at making paintings that humans can’t distinguish if they were made by an AI or a real human. In some cases, they preferred the paintings made by the AI!
If that wasn’t enough, AI has now learnt to write novels too. Just a few months ago, I read about this AI system called Shelley (created by researchers at MIT), that was writing horror stories for Halloween. You got to check her (its?) work out. It’s good! Also, a Japanese AI system almost won a literary award after writing a short novel, aptly titled, “The Day A Computer Writes A Novel”.
The recent discussions about AI taking over human jobs has revolved around more traditional, labour-intensive and white collar jobs that uses decision making and problem solving. But now, it seems like even the jobs of creative people is not safe anymore. That’s weird to think about, at the least.
As I was listening to Aiva’s music, I was really impressed and kind of in disbelief how an AI can produce such heartfelt music. When I saw the paintings made by the AI system, I was really impressed and couldn’t ever imagine it being made by a program.
And when I read the short horror stories by Shelley and the excerpts from the novel written by the Japanese AI, I was left really impressed how these systems have an understanding of language and how it can be used to give rise to several emotions in a human!
We are surely moving into a new world, people. Be prepared. We are slowly creating a second intelligent species on the planet and I am not sure what to think about it, honestly speaking. Well, I guess, time will tell. How do you feel about all of this?
