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. How artificial intelligence has advanced compared to how it was in the past is mind boggling. The presentation to me made me think that it’s uncertain whether it could be a benefit to humanity or that it could be destructive.”

The presenter gave an example by using Siri and explained that the feature has a programmed response, and thus came to the conclusion that it does not pass the Turing test.

“Even if a computer can pass the Turing test, it doesn’t mean that it understands it,” he said.

The subject brings to question other technological devices that are expanding the world into the future, and questions about human beings possibly being replaced, one that Guzman is thinking about.

He said,”I read an article a couple of weeks ago, about how Walmart has changed its accounting system to a streamlined automated system, that means the people who had those jobs aren’t, […], Walmart had to reassign different roles to those employees.

“It’s a scary thing to think about, […], what will happen to those people? How can they compete with these machines? What will happen to the economy? That is something that really scares me.”