Erstellt am: 20. 3. 2015 - 19:01 Uhr

Artificial Intelligence - An Introduction

Speech recognition, cyborgs, funerals for dead-never-really-live dogs, Scarlett Johansson's sexiest body part, a robot catfish at SXSW, a human brain collective grid, and my cousin Martin Haslinger.

APA/Ryerson University

hitchBOT sitting in the passenger seat of a car after hitching a ride. A trivia-loving, wellington-wearing, tweeting robot hitchhiked across Canada last summer, one ride at a time.

I've been told that hitchhiking cross-country or anywhere really is not the smartest thing in the world but if you have artificial intelligence (see hitchBot above), I guess you're good.

The field of artificial intelligence is vast and continues to expand since the term was coined fifty years ago. Some people are all for it and say it's the only way forward, others say robots aren't all that, and then there's Stephen Hawking (who certainly has benefited from the combination of man and machine) and his cautious take.

The multi-multi-facetted world of artificial intelligence, of course, starts with an attempt to understand the human brain.

Here's how my human brain worked when the Reality Check team proposed we create a Saturday Special on the subject...in the form of my highly evolved and fine-tuned (haha) stream of consciousness:

dpa-Zentralbild/ka/zi

Luft? Uh-oh.

Artificial Intelligence...wasn't there a movie about that with Scarlett Johansson ... Scarlett's voice... Scarlett's boobies... oh wait, what?... oh yeah artificial intelligence...Roland told me about the first ever robot dog funeral ... I love robot doggies ... wait, concentrate... I know NOTHING about artificial intelligence... hang on, my cousin Martin Haslinger holds PATENTS on prosthetic finger technology and knows about cyborgs... his mother and my birthmother are twins so I must know about cyborgs... I doubt it works like that... I wonder if people in the team can tell that I'm clueless... I think they can... I know they can... I'm gonna do the trailer for the show using speech recognition... when I say we I mean Rudi in the Production Department of course... I need to do some serious research (there must be a movie)... I don't know where to start...

You don't really need an excuse to watch Björk's amazing video but I had a good one: RESEARCH!

Here's another good place to start if you're daunted yet intrigued by the world of artificial intelligence:

Artificial Intelligence is as fascinating a field as it is a divisive one. Since the term was coined fifty years ago, where has it taken the world and looking ahead, where will it lead? With a professor of cybernetics (he develops CYBORGS…for real) and a professor of computer science (who specialises in algorithms and complexity in AI), Reality Check offers a little something for you to wrap your brain around—Artificial Intelligence: An Introduction. .

Subscribe to the Reality Check podcast and get the whole programme after the show, or check out fm4.orf.at/realitycheck