A young man in the back raised his hand.
“No need to raise your hand. Just speak up.”
“You study human behavior,” the young man shouted.
“Okay. Anyone else?”
This time, a young woman spoke up from the back. “You study patterns in behavior.”
“Cultures,” another young woman cried out from the same row.
“All correct,” Jennifer confirmed. And with a press on the remote on the lectern, she changed the slide on the screen.
Anthropology
‘The scientific study of humans, human behavior
and societies, in the past and present.’
“And there you have it. So, if you don’t like people, I guess you’re in the wrong place.” The room laughed, and Jennifer felt her shoulders lower a bit. She’d never felt comfortable presenting for large crowds. Even when she knew she had all the knowledge needed to give a sparkling presentation. It always took a first joke and the appropriate reaction from the crowd to break the ice, to make her feel comfortable. From here on, she knew and sensed it would be easy. Again, she changed the slide on the screen.
Fields in Anthropology:
Sociocultural
Biological
Archaeological
Linguistic
“Now, these are the main fields of anthropology I like to recognize. There are many more to be named, such as economic, political, applied, art, media, music, film, medical, nutritional, psychological, kinship, feminism, gender and even sexuality and many, many more. You can all regard them as subsets of the four main fields. And my specialism is Linguistic Anthropology.” Another slide appeared on the screen:
Linguistic Anthropology
The understanding of human communications,
verbal and non-verbal, across space and time.
The social uses of language,
and the relationship between language and culture.
“Now. Let me ask you a seemingly off-topic question. Can a computer be intelligent?”
For a few seconds, the potential students looked left and right at each other, but the room stayed silent.
“Let me add something. Can we agree that one of the primary manifestations of human intelligence is language?”
Many of the youngsters now nodded and mumbled confirmation.
“Some would even say that the acquisition of language is the most significant intellectual accomplishment of humankind. So, now I ask you again: Can a computer be intelligent?”
“They have a language, so yes,” a young woman in the front row replied.
Jennifer smiled. “If what I stated before was true, you must be right.”
The young woman smiled back.
“And yet”—Jennifer glanced at the young woman again, who now frowned back—“computers only understand what we tell them to, and generally they don’t understand us, and we don’t understand them without translation, and here the problems begin. There are many more problems that we need to address before we can call a computer intelligent. Problems such as communication, perception, knowledge, planning, learning, reasoning and thinking. Regarding thinking.” An image appeared on the screen.
“You all heard of the Turing test?” About half the students raised their hands. “For the other half,” Jennifer continued. “In 1950, Alan Turing developed a test to determine a computer’s ability to show intelligent behavior impossible to differentiate from a human. In this example, human C is the interrogator. He’s given the task of trying to determine, between A and B, which is the computer and which is the human. Officially, the interrogator is limited to using pre-defined written questions. Though much debated, if we take the test for truth, computers have already won and proven their intelligence in the past decade. And that brings me to my special interest.”
Human and Computer Awareness
vs.
Evolution
“I’m sure you’ll agree when I say that there are many levels of intelligence. I only have to look around the room to see there are smart people and....” Jennifer paused for a second. “And let’s say there are smarter people. And no, I’m not going to tell you who is who.” She smiled, and the room grinned back.
“Humans are the only animals on Earth who are aware of their mortality or awareness,” she continued in a severe tone. “No other animal is aware of its existence and eventually at the end of it, at its inevitable death. Neither do computers. Now, what does that mean? To be honest, I’m not completely sure myself.” The room giggled again. “No, really, all I can say is that some think that intelligence equals awareness of his own mortality. That would mean if we can teach a computer—or better, if a machine can learn by itself—that its life is evanescent, it would create, by definition, consciousness and could be considered intelligent.
“On the other hand, if this is true, animals will probably never be regarded as intelligent, because I don’t see anyone soon explaining to my dog that he is mortal.” Jennifer took a deep breath. “I guess what I’m trying to say is that studying here, or wherever you wind up, I expect your study will create as much, or even more, questions than it will answer. And with that note, I have one thing I would like to give you before you leave here tonight. One thing to think about when you’re at home tonight, sitting on your couch watching Netflix or playing a game on your Xbox or swiping on your phones.” She swiped the screen of an invisible phone in her hand. “Think about this.” With a push of a button, large red letters appeared on the screen.
Evolution = Extinction
“Whatever definition of intelligence you’ll use, in our time, we will see computers become more and more intelligent. We will see them grow, learn how to communicate with us and with each other. We will see them take over more tasks from us. They’ll drive us, cook our food, grow our crops, heal us, build our houses, probably even write our books
