Artificial intelligence leading into the future

The Philosophy Club took a look at artificial intelligence and how sci-fi can be reality. Philosophy instructor Daniel Vecchio was the presenter for the Tuesday, Oct. 4 meeting which featured a lecture on machines and if they could be the future of our world. Vecchio explained to the audience of 15 different groups of people perceive as living things, he went on further to discuss how to tell a difference between a living human and a computer. "Passing the Turing test, […], you watch a conversation going on, on a computer screen, one is a human, and the other is an artificial intelligence. "If the observer can't determine which is the human and which is the AI in a reliable manner, it doesn't pass the test and has no mind," he said. The test was created by Alan Turing to figure out machine intelligence. Faculty in attendance made a comparison to the Terminator franchise and how AIs can eventually take over should the human race not be careful. Another comparison was made to Star Trek where the characters were trying to figure out if a machine had a soul and should be treated with human rights or not. Students also were interested in the topic of AIs. Luis Guzman, history and journalism major, said,"The presentation was interesting.