Artificially bright or genuinely daft?

IBM’s artificial intelligence (AI) programme, Watson, recently wrote a script for a car commercial, which the car’s maker fleshed out with some human inputs and released.

Watson studied data on what people connected with in award-winning commercials over the last 15 years, and wrote a script for a car that comes alive, faces a combat situation, survives and drivesaway into the sunset.

Artificial intelligence on the brink of losing its qualifier? Sentience is something that eludes even intelligent animals like dogs: in the animal kingdom, only the elephant makes out that its reflection in the mirror is not another elephant in the room but simply an image of its own.


If machines acquire sentience, even in the imagination of artificial intelligence, things are turning Transformer-ative.

This presents humankind with a number of choices. One, evolve a stringent code for AI creators, with Elon Musk helming the effort, which precludes AI from gaining sentience even as it performs mundane functions.

Two, design AI to keep tabs on AI with a tendency to go rogue. Three, invest in time travel research, so that, if things turn out too murky, humans can still nip AI in the bud. Perhaps we should let Watson decide which course to pursue, with the firm assurance that there is a Holmes around to put Watson in his place. Elementary, right?