people

We are in the 21st century and the progress of technology brings us smaller, better, more sophisticated and even smarter robots and nanomachines. Only five years ago I was using a Pentium 3 desktop, now we have moved into the quad core Intel processors that make Pentium 3 look like it is sleeping on the job.

Technology is a wonderful thing. There is absolutely no doubt about that obvious fact staring at all of us in the face. Just a week ago, I saw a tv programme on the National Geographic channel that featured a group of really smart professors in the US trying to design and create a robot that can do house chores - autonomous robots.

Wonderful as technology may seem to be and how much research is going into trying to make artificial intelligence, what most of us call AI, you'd realise that achieving AI is going to one hell of a task. At this point in time, the possibility of a full blown AI robot with its own intelligence and a mind of its own seems remote. Remote but the possibility is still there.

Through the path of time, humans have proven to be very agile at evading disaster and surviving millions of years since the dawn of time. Great dinosaurs perished in a cataclysmic mysterious manner, great beasts like the mammoth perished along with time, yet humans have evolved from ape-like beings to beings like you and I.

I can't help but think there must be a reason so many living creatures have succumbed to the ravages of time yet we, humans have survived for so long and at the same time brought about revolutionary ideas and solutions - Benjamin Franklin discovering electricity, Alexander Graham Bell who brought us the telephone, Henry Ford who brought us the car, German Karl Ferdinand Braun invented the cathode ray tube oscilloscope and a whole plethora of other inventions by extraordinary people out there.............

Ever wondered what the world will be like with AIs around? I think it'd be scary. A world filled with emotionless metal bonded robots running around doing stuff we do. Makes you think about those movies where robots take over the world and turn humans into slaves right?

As much as I appreciate what technology has done for me, I do not wish for the world to have sophisticated human-like AIs. In my opinion, technology will never be able to replace the causal ambiguity and ingenuity humans have - emotions, feelings, compassion, empathy.

I am not surprised that famous businessmen in the past as early as the 19th century foresaw the dawn of technology and coming of the era of mechanisation. But machines can never replace the human emotions and mind.... too unique to be replicated.

Andrew Carnegie, the founder of Carnegie Steel understood all too well and once said:

'"Take away my people, but leave my factories, and soon grass will grow on the factory floors. Take away my factories, but leave my people, and soon we will have a new and better factory."

Amazing words of wisdom that tell me people are the essential element of this world we live in. You can have all the riches in the world but without the people to share your happiness with, it is of no use. Have the most sophisticated piece of machinery but no one to man it, you have pile of scrap metal. You may create AIs but you can never create the human emotions.........