Daily thoughts 
No Comments Artificial Intelligence Doesn’t have the Right
Can we make an artificial brain capable of thinking like a human?
I think we probably can, eventually. From what I know of artificial intelligence research, though, some key elements have been left out, or at least aren’t widely publicized. One of those key elements is right-brain thinking.
A little to the left
Computers are great at logic. In fact, if all it took to rule the world was a capacity for logically processing, we’d already be ruled by legions of machines. But that’s not enough.
We often refer to logic as “left-brained” thinking, because the left side of our brain is primarily responsible for logical processes. At one point in time, it was thought the left side was all that made us human, and the right side of our brains was more or less vestigial — left over junk we didn’t really use or need.
Humans are in the right
It turns out we were wrong — the right side of our brain serves vital functions the left side can’t imagine doing. The right side focuses on “the big picture,” recognizing patterns, faces, the context of a situation. The ability to empathize with the way others feel would be lost if we didn’t have the right side of our brain.
A new way of processing
Logical processing like that done in the left side of our brains can be reduced to mathematics and decision trees. We’re already inferior to computers in that regard. However, the ability to empathize, to see all the data at one time and recognize patterns, to understand when the color red means love and when it means danger — these are not easily done by machine. Certainly not in a continuous, interconnected way.
Can you imagine a computer contemplating the color red, its connotations for love, danger, and more, then appreciating the poetic irony of situation where pursuing love actually produces danger?
Part of the problem is at the very heart of how today’s computers work. Everything is ones and zeros, black or white, on or off. Logic works that way. Less-concrete concepts like patterns and context do not.
Is it possible we need to rethink how computers work in the first place to get them to think like humans?
More importantly, do we really want to give them the ability to think like humans?
Stay tuned
In the next several days, I’ll also weigh in on how I think the following affect artificial intelligence limitations:
- emotions
- hormones
- Maslow’s hierarchy of needs
