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Beyond AI by J. Storrs Hall, PhD
01/07/2008 . Source: Geoff Willmetts 
pub: Prometheus Books. 408 page annotated index hardback. Price: $28.00 (US), £18.99 (UK). ISBN: 978-1-59102-511-5. Buy Beyond AI in the USA - or Buy Beyond AI in the UK  check out website: www.prometheusbooks.com
The first thing that should strike you about this book is it has the famous Frank Kelly Freas picture of a robot holding an injured human in its hand. Freas, in one of his own artbooks, 'The Art Of Science Fiction', says he captioned it as, 'Daddy, can you fix this?'
In many respects, J. Storrs Hall's book, 'Beyond AI', sub-titled 'Creating The Conscience Of The Machine' is looking at how far into the future we have to step before we create an Artificial Intelligence. If anything, he predicts its only a couple decades away at most. From this, there is an examination of the problems that need to be resolved and even goes as far as covering Asimov's Three Laws Of Robotics and why they might be impractical to implement. Then again, even Asimov did this in his own 'Robot' stories by simply asking the word 'knowingly'.
Hall not only refers to Asimov but also to SF writers Vernor Vinge and Arthur Clarke, at least in his captions. It's a shame really he didn't address other examples such as the HAL 9000 or even Skynet from 'The Terminator' films as to their real-life practicability but confined any other reference to DF Jones' 'Colossus: The Forbin Project'.
If anything, Science Fiction is the one genre which has looked heavily into AI and what it could mean. Hall hasn't ignored this, just a shame he didn't dig around a little more on some of the permutations that have come up that have made some people a little wary. Granted, most scenarios have presented a dangerous monster let loose by mankind but at least he could have indicated this might not be true or not likely to be far advanced. If the media is going to pick up on anything when the first AI goes on-line you can bet its going to be a worse case SF scenario.
One thing I think Hall missed out on is that any AI is only likely to be as intelligent as its programmers. Even a self-learning piece of software will be confined to such a limitation. It might be capable of exploring all the options for any decision but it still has to make the right choice at the end of the day. Unlike playing chess, there is no right answer just the one's that give either the safest or more practical solution. If an AI is given emotions to back this up then it could also make the wrong decision.
Before anyone thinks I have a downer on this book let me say far from it. This book made me think about Artificial Intelligence and its practicability a lot. Hall covers a lot of its options which should give food for thought for any writer wanting to address such ideas in their own stories. I've even had a thought about one myself because of this book which makes it worth the admission to owning your own copy.
Some of my own conclusions from this book is that any AI is going to need to be able to map a virtual reality of things around it in its memory and probably carry it the same way as in computer games, abbreviating form until it needs to utilise it simply to conserve memory space and ease of access. The toughest area of its programming is making sense of everything or it will be no better than the simplest animal or the youngest infant. Certainly, it will have enough computational power to ponder on any decision a billion times in a few seconds before making any decision.
I doubt if humans would even notice the time that took waiting for an answer. It will only be as powerful as the hand that can turn the power off to its systems. Hall didn't really go into whether AI would be based on current silicon processors or protein which is where computer technology is likely to be in a few years from now.
If anything, this is a useful primer which you really ought to have a read and a heavy ponder.
GF Willmetts
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