Man v/s Machines

Compassion, fear, hope, anger, frustration, loneliness, sorrow, happiness,surprise, envy, misery, gratitude...
These are some amongst the multitude of emotions that an individual experiences in one's lifetime. We can "feel" these wide ranging emotions, but machines? Not yet...

All these can be clearly observed in human beings or the Homo sapiens...other species can do so too but to a certain extent. These emotions can be considered as the various psychological states of an individual's mind. They originate in the limbic system of the human brain which comprises the thalamus, hypothalamus, amygdala, hippocampus.

I wouldn't go into the anatomy part of it for I am not a neurosurgeon!!! But, these complex emotions change the very fact that machines which despite tremendous technological advances aren't able to experience these making our species a class apart from them(May be in the future, machines may out do man). It's fascinating to watch science fiction movies like Terminator, Star trek, I,Robot or read books like 3001: The Final Odyssey by Arthur C Clarke. Researchers have been working on such possibilities since ages and this has led to a field of Strong Artificial Intelligence which aims to develop machines which can mimic man in all aspects and probably exceed human capabilities. Advances in the field of AI has led to applications such as neural networks, data mining and computer pattern recognition.

 For instance, IBM's Watson defeated humans on the quiz show Jeopardy in the human versus machine match. It's astonishing to hear about these breakthroughs. What people fail to realise is that it was man who came up with the complex algorithms and software in such computer systems. I salute thee, O Creator. This ultimately brings us to the conclusion that unless scientists come up with software which can learn all by itself, it's the human brain which is responsible for all the scientific establishments.

NASA's robot

This makes me wonder about the tremendous hidden potential this 1.5 kilogram mass of cells can do if challenged! More to look out for in the future!!!

I wonder why???

Why do we have 10 fingers in total? Why do things appear the way they appear? Why is it that the Sun rises in the east? Why has English become the global language?

Well..so many many questions pop up!!! Though humans claim to have understood the phenomenon of Big Bang and dark matter, there is so much that is left unanswered. Have you ever wondered what would have been the means of communication if not English. Sign language as ancients probably used? May be...but there are a lot of cons...one of them being - I couldn't have been blogging now. It would have been a totally different experience then. Weird to think of things as they are if you go into the depths in search of those simple things you come across in daily life.

The reason behind this is that we have accepted things the way they are. We are reluctant to change. We have been informed about certain things in childhood and kids aren't encouraged to be inquisitive. The main reason is that there are several questions in the minds of individuals and no one really knows why such and such a thing is in such and such a manner.

In this changing world, people hardly have the time to think of these minor issues. I have seen people who ask ' Does it really matter?'. Well...It depends on your view.

Science hasn't achieved its peak in certain small things we accept as a part of life. (Note : I'm not being harsh on any scientist here! I'm thoroughly grateful for all that humans have achieved. Right from the marvels of the expanding universe to the incredibly small quarks and anti quarks. I am not against science, in fact I'm an avid Science and Technology fan). But the harsh reality is that we are yet to discover so much more that is existent in this universe. There is so much that is still beyond the scope of human understanding. A revolution in scientific thinking in the near future will clarify these doubts plaguing the human mind.

Only Time Will Tell :)