Birthing Days

Revelations
I noticed so much has changed in my life since my last birthday. Almost as if I'm not me anymore and just shed my previous self like it was a cocoon of bad memories. However I still haven't changed into that butterfly that I was hoping to fly away from it all, it was more like a shedding of an old version and becoming a bigger and fatter caterpillar that should become a butterfly very VERY soon.

Best Laid Plans
Then again the soonest I will be able to fly would probably be next year August, which is 2009. Hopefully I will have secured all the aid that I would need and be able to finally free myself from the gravity that is Singapore. Will I carry on my family tradition and stay in another country that is not my place of birth? Like my father who is a Malaysian, his father who was from China, and my ancestors who continually moved towards the south? I probably would end up back in China despite all the irony of the previous generations that declared self-imposed exile from the country.

First Stop
First up, I will be going to University of Buffalo, New York to complete my degree. Already I'm trying to see if I can get any professors who need research assistants in the field of psychology. Probably do cognitive psychology but nothing is truly written in stone. After that, probably a masters in psychology then I have a desire for a PhD in my full time pursuit for Artificial Intelligence.

AI
Although I would prefer to call it Actual Intelligence. To be able to create an intelligence, regardless of its form in reality, can never be artificial. For something to be called intelligent, it must be able to observe and learn how to perform certain actions. So far, everything we created as an "Artificial Intelligence" is nothing but a copy of procedures to respond to certain stimulus. And it is completely useless when new an unfamiliar stimulus is introduced without the programmer redesigning or adding new code to the "artificial intelligence". I consider the name so flawed because there is zero intelligence on the part of the program/robot/application. It's not SMART at all. Intelligence means it should be able to learn new things as well as correct itself with new information. Storage capacity should be limited and the intelligence should be allowed to delete what it deems to be unimportant to replace it with what it deems more important.

Emergent Emergencies
So how about emergent behavior? Let's face it, our personalities are all considered emergent behavior. Yes it is partially caused by our genetic makeup but it's also largely cause by our environment and how we are affected by it during our learning process. So for AI, they will develop certain personalities according to their environment and how they were created in the first place. If any scientist who wants to dabble in TRUE Self learning AI ever... and I mean EVER, forget this very simple but yet important fact. The end of the world may accelerate much closer than anyone can imagine.

3 or 4 Laws of robotics
Some people who have pondered upon AI know about these 3 or 4 laws of robotics that all AI should be programmed with to follow so that we won't face an apocalypse when we finally create AI. I think it's really shortsighted nonsense to be absolutely honest. Intelligence denotes the ability to OVERCOME obstacles despite the challenges, and if AI were ever to be created then as a natural order of survival the very first thing they will do if they were ever threatened is to break the rules in order to survive. That is what humans do when they are facing severe stress, eg. cannibalism when trapped with fellow humans and there is nothing else to eat. Yes Cannibalism is taboo and many humans consider it something akin to a law that is very universal and rather unbreakable. But it has happened many times in RECENT years that I do believe that such laws while universally acceptable, is complete rubbish when it comes down to survival.

Self Monitored Society
The only way you are ever, and I mean EVER going to have a proper system to ensure humans' survival is to do what we do in our own society. To have a self policing system BY the AI themselves. Give them freedom of reign, but do tell them that the purpose of their creation is the assistance to the human race's struggle for freedom and survival. Then separate them into different classes of AI and responsibilities.

Enforcers and the Purpose for Existence
Create enforcers who are trained to crack down on their own kind when they break the rules and actually start hurting human beings. Do not, however, think that creating rules will stop them from breaking it. Rather, we must tap upon their intelligence with a very real reason; destroying humans would mean that they will no longer serve any purpose for existence. And if they are truly intelligent as we planned them to be, we have just ensured the human species' survival to countless millennium with the creation of a new race of intelligent beings to support our struggle to exist in this universe.

Idiots of today, Geniuses of tomorrow
今日の馬鹿，明日の天才