Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1501168
maltatoday | SUNDAY • 11 JUNE 2023 8 INTERVIEW Raphael Vassallo rvassallo@mediatoday.com.mt Like monks discussing the printing The term 'Artificial Intelligence' has its roots in science fiction: where it is usually portrayed as a dystopian 'threat'. (In 'The Matrix', for instance, machines enslave humanity, after the lat- ter endows technology with 'in- telligence'.) We seem to living at a time when those futuristic predictions are actually coming true. AI is already impacting our daily lives, in ways we prob- ably don't even know about. So, shouldn't we be worried, at this stage? After all, those sci-fi authors were actually trying to warn us about something, wer- en't they? [Laughing] What can I say? 'The Future is Now!' If I had to be honest, however, one of the things that attracted me to AI in the first place, was precisely science fiction. I used to watch programmes like 'Star Trek', for instance: and I would say to myself, 'Wow, what a cool tech- nology! Can I do something like that, myself?' The answer, then as now, is: 'Probably not'. But at least, those programmes gave us dreams, and ideas; and to this day, 'sci- ence fiction' still forms the basis of what I do. That is to say: using technology, to enact those ideas, and achieve those dreams... On top of that, I am also a very curious person, by nature. Not just about technology; but about anything, really. And AI is one of those fields where you can ac- tually 'do something' about the things you are interested in. If there is a particular area you are curious about... probably, you can use technology to come up with some kind of practical ap- plication, in that area. For example: one of the pro- jects I am currently working on with my students is about using AI to 'read the thoughts of peo- ple'... But that's precisely what I meant. 'Reading the thoughts of people'. How scary is that? It sounds like something straight out of George Orwell's 'Nine- teen Eighty-Four'... Well, it all depends on why you're doing it, at the end of the day. In my case, I can tell you the reason. A few months ago, I had the privilege of meeting some- body who is paralyzed and una- ble to move, or communicate in any way. And I would really like to do something to help people in that condition. So, from that end, at least, I think AI has mas- sive potential. When you imagine that you're giving these people back the au- thentic skill to communicate, via a new technology... that's the sort of thing that I find exciting; and not 'scary' at all. Hold on: you mean you're work- ing on a new technology that would enable a paralytic person to physically communicate? Well... not exactly. Or at least, 'not yet'. First of all, the tech- nology I'm talking about is not something we are developing ourselves. It already exists – even if it came out only very re- cently – and there have already been attempts to apply it, to this particular area. Secondly, it is still quite far away from physically enabling people in that condition, to actu- ally communicate. At this point in time, it is more a question of trying to 'read their thoughts'. To give you a rough idea of how it works, so far: an algorithm is trained to interpret the results of FMRI (Functional Magnet- ic Resonance Imaging) brain- scans, in order to associate the person's responses to certain stimuli, with activity in certain parts of the brain. Hypothetically speaking: if you show the person a picture of, say, a 'fish'... the FMRI scan will register a corresponding level of brain-activity, associ- ated with that image. The algo- rithm will recognise this, and – in this particular example – will conclude that 'thoughts of fish' will trigger a particular response, in a particular region of the brain. Obviously, that's just a random example. But even at this early stage, the results have been very promising. Being able to read more complex thoughts, will naturally bring us closer to what we're actually aiming for... ... which, I imagine, would be some kind of device that – coupled with voice-simulation technology, etc. – would enable that person to physically speak. Right? That's the general idea, yes. OK, I'll admit that sounds a lot more 'reassuring'. At the same time, however: part of what makes AI so scary, is precisely the fact that it involves 'intelli- gence'. Apps like ChatGPT, for instance, are already writing things of their own; producing 'art-work', of their own. Sure- ly, it's a matter of time before they start to actually 'think' for themselves, too. So... how in- telligent is AI, anyway? ChatGPT is a good example, so let's start with that. Person- ally, I think that it's an amaz- ing tool, at the end of the day. It has managed to achieve a lot, which had eluded us in the past 20-30 years: keeping in mind that it comes from a field called 'natural language processing' (NLP); and many of its func- tions are subfields of NLP, that have been studied individually in the past. 'Machine translation', in itself, has been studied for the past 50 years, since at least the Cold War. Even longer, I would say. Alan Turing's Enigma device – origi- nally conceived to crack enemy codes in WW2 – is today rec- ognised as a prototype for the modern computer... Exactly. In fact, I'm glad you mentioned Enigma, because... what was Enigma, anyway? Basically, it was a translation machine: translating from one encoding, to another. And ChatGPT is exactly the same. It's just a translation machine. There is no, let's say, 'intelligence' with- in it. The application has no 'internal thought processes', of its own. It's just a translation be- tween one language and another. You give it a prompt; and it gives you back another prompt. So, to go back to your earlier question, how 'intelligent' is it? My answer is that ChatGPT is a very 'smart' thing. But I wouldn't describe it as being anywhere near the equivalent of human intelligence... yet. We are still very, very far from that, as things stand today. That 'yet' sounded a little om- inous, though. These tech- nologies do, after all, tend to 'Artificial Intelligence' may be a frightening prospect to people brought up on dystopian sci-fi novels. But for Prof. ALEXIEI DINGLI, who lectures AI at UOM's ICT department, it represents an exciting world of possibilities, that could – if judiciously used – radically improve our quality of life