Category: ENGLISH

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A robot presses buttons

I’m petting a robot. The robot is called Pepper. She is one meter twenty tall, blinks with huge eyes and giggles happily when I scratch her plastic shell with my fingers. I can’t stop petting her and wonder about myself. Actually, I came here because I wanted to learn something about artificial intelligence. Instead I learn something about myself. A robot presses my buttons and feelings arise in me that I can hardly resist.

And obviously this doesn’t work because the robot is such a complicated device.

It takes a while before I understand what is going on. It works because I function so simple.

Excerpt from “Codonaut – Where do we program ourselves?”, a Korsakow film about artificial intelligence. Go to codonaut.de to see the film.

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Mirror of thinking

Humans are in the process of developing artificial intelligence. And to understand how thinking works, they take the most intelligent being they can think of and analyze how it thinks. So they put people into brain scanners and do all possible tests and examinations with them. And the result is always the same: People are insanely bad at thinking. Not only do they make many mistakes, they also believe all sorts of nonsense they have come up for themselves.

It may not be a good idea to create intelligence according to the model of humans – and maybe it doesn’t work at all with artificial intelligence.

Much more important, however, is that people build themselves a mirror by developing artificial intelligence. A mirror in which people can observe themselves thinking. That is what will change humankind.

Like when someone has a stain on his face. Only by looking into the mirror does he become aware of it. It may be very easy to get rid of the stain. But you first have to see the stain to know how to wipe it off your face.

Excerpt from “Codonaut – Where do we program ourselves?”, a Korsakow film about artificial intelligence. Go to codonaut.de to see the film.

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Carving arrowheads

At a party, I argue with a woman. She is agitated because she read that children in Sweden have such fine motor disorders that they cannot even sharpen a pencil.

“Whether it’s good or bad to be able to sharpen a pencil depends entirely on the point of view”, I say, and she doesn’t understand me.

I can’t carve arrowheads any more and if I had to, I’d be terribly bad at it.

And any hunter and gatherer would ask if he saw this: What kind of stupid monkey is that?

Excerpt from “Codonaut – Where do we program ourselves?”, a Korsakow film about artificial intelligence. Go to codonaut.de to see the film.

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Intelligence as we know it

Where I came from, I wasn’t particularly smart. This can be proven by many testimonies and reports of my former teachers. In other places it was different and so in the course of my life I collected very different assessments of my capability to think.

The reason is probably that there is not one intelligence, but instead many different kinds. Just as there are different kinds of skills. One person migt be good when it comes to juggling balls. Another one is skilled at combining words and yet another one is good at combining lines of computer code.

When I watch my nephews play computer games with others in a team spread all over the world. They are skilled at using a technique that was completely unimaginable just a few years ago. How would you want to evaluate these skills? In the grading system of my former teachers?

Excerpt from “Codonaut – Where do we program ourselves?”, a Korsakow film about artificial intelligence. The film can be seen here: codonaut.de

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The tool that makes the human being

Humans have invented countless tools, the plough, the axe, the wheel, the steam engine, the computer. Humans have shaped the world with their inventions. They have changed flora and fauna, even the atmosphere. To an extent no other mammal before it has.

Without tools, the world would not exist as we know it today – with cities and cars, airplanes and digital networks spanning the entire planet.

Without tools, man would not exist – man would be an animal like any other.

Tools shaped humankind.

We live in a time of rapid inventions. Inventions that will perhaps change us as much as the plough did, or the taming of fire. What is new is that many inventions happen at the same time and the news of the new abilities spreads all over the planet at lightning speed.

It is an accelerated time in which parents can no longer imagine the world in which their children will live.

Excerpt from “Codonaut – Where do we program ourselves?”, a Korsakow film about artificial intelligence. Go to codonaut.de to see the film.

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