As there are so many movies out there like A.I. and the Terminator series, I can’t help that I’ve always been a little paranoid about advances in technology. The idea of computers thinking for themselves, or should I say drawing their own conclusions and making their own decisions frightens me a bit. Therefore, my interest was definitely sparked by our discussion of logic during our previous lesson.

As we covered in class, logic comes down to deductive and inductive reasoning. Deductive reasoning deals with known concepts, drawing conclusions with logic that can be proven. An example would be (1) All men are mortal (2) Socrates is a man (3) Socrates is mortal. Inductive reasoning deals with unknown concepts, thus using specific facts to come to a general conclusion. An example of this would be, lemons are edible, sour, yellow and juicy, therefore, I must be eating a lemon.

As we also learned, computers do not do well with inductive reasoning and this makes me feel more at ease, as it requires that technology is still dependent upon us. It is my fear however, that one-day technology will have mastered this form of logic. As of now, computers look at information as either true or false, however researchers of artificial intelligence are now working with “Fuzzy Logic,”

which allows the truth of a statement to be represented as a value between 0 and 1, rather than simply True (1) or False (0), which sounds a lot to me like inductive reasoning.

Let’s just say that I’m not too thrilled about this…

Induction & Deduction

After discussing Induction and Deduction in class I started to think about every movie that introduced the thought of artificial intelligence. Dr. Drake said that computers cannot Induct, only Deduct. Remember that Induction involves creating concepts while Deduction is the breaking down of concepts. Computers can only Deduct but what if they could Induct? What will happen when computers can create their own concepts? It is a scary thought, especially if the result is as bad as Hollywood has made it out to be.

Just about everyone here has seen The Matrix or a Terminator movie. Hollywood portrays machines as taking over and destroying humanity. In my opinion, humans would give computers the power to induct for logical reasoning. Take for example, the television series Knight Rider where the car "Kit" is used as a crime fighting tool. I believe that if we ever design computers and machines to be able to both Induct and Deduct we will not let them "take over."

It is interesting to think that one day computers may be able to think how we think. Yes a computer can deduct faster than probably anyone in the world, so imagine a computer inducting faster than anyone else in the world. Imagine a completely logical system creating new ideas to assist mankind. In the end it is exciting to think that this idea is closer than one may think. We use computers to send astronauts to space, send missiles into enemy territory, and to compute the most advanced equations and algorithms. I do not think it is too far fetched to believe that one day computers will be able to do what we as humans do....think on both sides of the spectrum.