Assignment # 8 Final Course Reflection

My perspective about humanities and science changed after taking this course because at first I wasn't as much knowledgable on the science part as much as I was on humanistic part. Since I come from a society that's richer in cultural aspects than science, it was typical that I see things more from a humanistic perspective. However I am a curious person and I like knowing how things work and since I grew up in a generation of several technologies which influences me to know more on the science part. In this class I learned a lot about the promise and perils of technologies and how evolution actually works. I also learned a lot about Albert Einstein and all his contributions to the contemporary world of advanced technology. Before I knew nothing about Albert Einstein except that he was a very famous and remarkable scientist. I learned how he was indirectly responsible in the making of the atomic bomb. Before I took this course I had very minimum knowledge about artificial intelligence but after taking this course I learned a lot about the past and present of artificial intelligence. Personally I did believe that there was a connection between science and humanities but I was never able to expand my knowledge enough to be able to identify it. It is a very thin connection and commonly speaking science and humanities are very conflicting fields. Taking this class helped me look more deeply into the two cultures and locate the contact between these two fields. After taking this class I've come up with the conclusion that I am both. I have strong humanistic values but I have grown a strong fascination for science and technology. I think after taking this class I am now very optimistic about where science and technology can takes us. Taking this class was not only greatly educative but it was equally as much interesting and fun. This class has influenced me to learn more and think critically about the future of the two cultures and where our technology will take us. It has persuaded me to be more interested and knowledgeable in the field of science and technology and be able to distinguish the bridge between two cultures. 

Assignment #7 Critical Thinking About a Scientist’s Life and Work

In my opinion one of the greatest scientist that influenced our technological advances and the way we live now was Albert Einstein. If it wasn't for his most important theory of general relativity we probably wouldn't have modern technology like the GPS for another 50 years. Or if it wasn't for his most important equation E=mc2 we wouldn't have modern refrigerators, the red-glowing exit signs in malls and movie theaters,  radiology examinations, tomography (PET) scans used for medical diagnostics in hospitals and several other technologies. That's how we are now able to locate exactly where tumors or cancer's are in our bodies.  Albert Einstein was an open minded thinker and although he was a great scientist his beliefs on non scientific issues were often indisputable. Although he became a well known physicist, he had struggled through school when he was young. He also faced struggle when Adolf Hitler came to power and since he was Jewish he wasn't able to go back to Germany. That's why he came to the U.S. and became an American citizen. He also wrote a letter to President Roosevelt persuading him to speed up the development of the most powerful bomb: the atomic bomb that was created using the E=mc2 equation. Einstein's work inspired us as well as threatened us. Some of his technologies hold a great promise in improving and advancing our technologies but some of them like the making of the atomic bomb threatens the entire existence of humans. 

Works Cited: 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Einstein

Assignment # 6 Sharing and Reflecting on Two Research Sources

My research paper was about Alan Lightman's Einstein's Dreams and his perspective on the two cultures, Humanities and Science. Albert Einstein was a great Physicist of all times but he was also a strong pacifist. Most of our modern technologies are based on Einstein's famous equation E=mc2 and the theory of general relativity. For my research paper the main articles that I used was a book review by Pangratios Papacosta "Eisntein's Dreams" accessed from Academic One File. This book review describes Einstein's dreams and compares it with other fictional novel and conveys that the author of this book avoids connecting these different dreams with any physics principles. It also conveys that this book bridges the gap between two cultures. I will be using this source to support my claim that Albert Einstein was not only a great scientist but a great humanist as well. Another source that I used was a biographical paper called "Einstein, Albert (1879-1955)" found from AccessScience. This academic paper contains Einstein's personal life and his achievements from birth to death. It displays everything about Einstein including who he was as a person as well as how he contributed to the technologies we are using today. It also talks about how he came up with his famous theory of relativity. I will be using this source to discuss how Einstein's personal life influenced his idea of relativity. 

Assignment #5 The Promise and Peril Of Robots in Film, TV and Real Life: Friends or Foes?

     One of the video clips that is appealing to me is “The Touch Bionics i-Limb Hand” from Bionics: Robotics for medicine. The positive thing about this robotic hand is that it can help people who have lost their hand in an accident or people who are born without hand due to birth defect. These people can be able to lead normal, high functioning lives and make them capable of carrying out everyday activities such as eating, drinking, changing clothes etc. Today the Robotic technology of this bionic hand has advanced so much that a person could now be able to sense or feel everything through their prosthetic device. I think it is quite amazing that people who have lost their upper body limbs can revive their sense of touch and the ability to do everyday things through a prosthetic device. I think this robotic technology is very promising for people who have lost their limbs and are in need to be able to live a normal functioning life. On the other hand, a robotic technology that terrified me was from a movie clip called The Matrix. The Robots in this movie created the matrix which was virtual reality that humans thought was real but in reality the human population was unconscious and placed inside pods so that the robots can use their bodies’ heat and electrical activity as an energy source.Virtual bots like Agent Smith had empowered human beings and they were able to morph into human bodies and had more power and strength than human beings in the matrix. Seeing those human beings wired up and stored like that was really terrifying and it makes me imagine if one day our robotic technology would be so advanced that they might enslave human beings just like in the matrix. We already have bionic hand that can make it possible to sense feeling through touch and artificial intelligent robots like Asimo and Nao that are capable of having a conversation, doing physical activities like sports and dance, being programmed with knowledge. I think in our contemporary world people are very acceptable of robots because we use them in our everyday lives like computers and smartphones. Technology is always welcomed in our society today and we are so relied and dependent on it, we never consider the possibility of it harming us. In the future we would even accept and welcome super intelligent robots because we might believe that robots cannot empower us because they are merely devices and a non-living technology, whose sole purpose is to serve humans.

Critical Thinking Blog- Assignment #4

               What is the true meaning of humanity and what separates us from a super-intelligent, human-like robot? Artificial intelligence has been the fastest growing field in robotics today. It is also a very controversial topic as to whether robots can have a real ‘consciousness’ like human, be intelligent like humans and be able to look exactly like a human. There are many works of literature based on the topic of robotics and artificial intelligence. One of them is an interesting essay by David Gelernter, “Dream-Logic, the Internet and Artificial Thought” which talks about the future of artificial intelligence and logically how successful it’ll be in replicating a real human being. Another great work of writings based on artificial intelligence is a science fiction novel by Phillip K. Dick, “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” This novel is about robots that are so advanced that it becomes tough to distinguish difference between a robot and a human.  

                In the novel “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” these super-intelligent robots or Nexus 6 androids as mentioned in the book act and appear exactly the way humans do, yet they also represent humanity’s main flaw which is the lack of empathy. The bounty hunters use this flaw in order to determine if the person is a robot or a human through a test called Voigt-Kampff test. However, when Rick Deckard, a bounty hunter visits Rosen association to retire any Nexus 6 androids, he is tricked into giving a test to Rachael. She is an android but they claim that she’s human in order to prove that the Voigt-Kampff test failed to tell a human apart from android. One example from the novel is when Eldon Rosen says “your police department—others as well—may have retired, very probably have retired, authentic humans with underdeveloped empathic ability, such as my innocent niece here” (Dick 321). This was the Rosen association’s way of discrediting the legitimacy of test. If the Voigt-Kampff test failed to differentiate a human and an android it meant that the police had no rights to shut down the production of Nexus 6.  The Rosens accused the police department of having killed innocent human beings.

                Controversial to the artificial intelligent androids in the novel, David Gelernter argues in his essay  that artificial intelligence will never go as far as a robot exactly replicating a human being because it won’t have a true ‘consciousness’ or be able to think on its own.  According to Gelernter, artificial intelligence is an artificial thought that is trained to impersonate a real human subject (Gelernter 264).   It means that artificial intelligence is basically a thought process that’s copied from an actual human being and is downloaded into a robot. The robot will only do or say things that it’s trained to do unlike the androids in Phillip K. Dick’s novel.  Gelernter says that “Even then, an artificially intelligent computer will experience nothing and be aware of nothing. It will say “that makes me happy,” but it won’t feel happy. Still: it will act as if it did. It will act like an intelligent human being” (Gelernter 264).  In other words robots will have no sense of reality at all; they would be unconscious and say things that are programmed into them beforehand. They will act and look like human beings but won’t really be able to feel anything including their existence. 

               In conclusion, artificial intelligence according to the Phillip K. Dick’s novel and David Gelernter’s essay states that robots can be super intelligent beings however they are controversial in a way that the androids in the novel seem to have a ‘conscious’ whereas according to Gelernter robots will never have a conscious and they’ll only do what they are programmed to do. I agree that Rachael Eldon (as well as other Nexus 6 androids) were intelligent beings as well as they had a built in conscious and emotion stimulated inside of them. They didn’t exactly feel anything but they thought that they did. It’s something that a delusional human being would be like. The reason why I think that is because those Nexus 6 robots had killed their owners on the off world and escaped to Earth due to their own conscious thought, although they were initially built to serve their owners. 

Critical Thinking Blog Assignment #3

                                                                        

Research Paper Milestone #1

For the research paper the topic that I’d like to work on is  Portraying Robots or Human Clones in Film. The reason why I chose this topic is because I personally like to watch Sci-Fi movies and TV shows because it is very interesting and it makes us imagine what technology might be like in the future. In the contemporary world, robots are already a part of our daily lifestyle, for example, we use our phones or computers to predict weather, the airplanes have auto pilot modes where robots fly the plane and humans don’t have to do much, machines that build our cars, in fact everything today is manufactured by machines. There are tons of examples that prove that we are completely dependent on technology. Today we have built robots that look like humans and be able to have a conversation like one. However, they do not have a true conscious and we can still spot the difference between humans and robots. The way today’s films portray robots have many positive and negative aspects. It raises a debate if weather or not robots will someday become so powerful that they will be able to take over humanity and enslave us. Well I think it’ll be quite interesting to do the research on it and predict what would be the outcome of futuristic robots. A few movie topics that I’d like to research on is AI (2001) by Stephen Spielberg, The Matrix (1999) by the Wachowski Brothers and,  I, Robot (2004) by Isaac Asimov. 

Assignment # 2: Does ‘Popular Science’ Today Awe Us, Inspire Us or Threaten Us?

The show “Cosmos: A Space Time Odyssey” hosted by Neil DeGrasse Tyson demonstrates where our Earth belongs within the Virgo Super cluster. It shows us the measurement of space and time relative to Earth. Tyson introduced us to Giordano Bruno who was a Renaissance Italian philosopher. He explains the hardship Bruno faced due to believing that Sun was the center and other planets revolved around it. Since it went against the geocentric model embraced by the church, he was punished and was burned on a stake. Many people gave up their lives for the sake of popular science, the science that we learn today. It is all thanks to people like Bruno who sacrificed themselves so that the popular science could be more accurate. The show also uses the concept of the Cosmic Calendar to describe what it would look like if we can fit the time since the Big Bang till the birth of human species in a year. I was quite wonder struck when he explained that all of humanity has only existed in the last minute of the last second of the last month in that year. The tone of this show doesn't seem very optimistic about humanistic values since our place in this universe is tinier than a speck of dust. However, it is very optimistic about humans being able to explore this universe more through future technology and discoveries. I am astonished by how vast and majestic our universe is and how infinite it seems, so yes I do feel very small. However, I don’t believe that there isn't a point of our existence in this universe. Our humanistic values and the ability to be able to discover different galaxies and find out the origin of our solar system and many other things beyond that makes us far more valuable than merely our size in this universe. Despite being a bit differed towards the tone of this show, I have learned a lot about our place in this universe and what it is actually made up of. The science in this show is very interesting and it makes me to know more about astronomy.