I just read a fascinating article.  The author of the article, Kevin Roose, is quite taken by the advancements in artificial intelligence (A.I.) in recent years.  At the rate that technology advances, we all need to be aware of its possibilities.

Intelligence, defined as the ability to acquire, understand, and use knowledge, is a major factor in the progress of humanity.  Whether we're speaking of Albert Einstein, Jonas Salk, or others in the scientific and medical communities, or the genius of a Rembrandt painting or a Frank Lloyd Wright–designed building, we recognize and benefit from the efforts of those giants.

It's easy to overlook earlier advances by men such as Thomas Edison, Eli Whitney, and others because we have benefited from their genius for so long that we take it for granted.  Let's not forget the efforts of Marie Curie and other women of great accomplishment.  But genius in the human realm is far too rare and often unrecognized.  Who can say with any degree of certainty how many brilliant ideas were discarded as nonsense or ridiculed out of consideration as being too far-fetched to bother with?

Most of us are aware, at least peripherally, that A.I.s are now able to drive cars, even with less than total success.  Stories of crashed, driverless Teslas come to mind.  We know that supercomputers can beat world-champion chess masters at their own game.

But what most of us are not aware of are the advances, and possible future advances, in biology and medicine.  What has been accomplished by the mapping and understanding of protein molecular structure by A.I. has been mind-boggling to the scientists who struggled unsuccessfully with the issue for decades.  Many individuals, including me, are given hope by the potential rapid advancements in curing diseases that are killing people daily.  Imagine if disease information could be fed into a supercomputer, and, within seconds, a viable treatment would emerge.  That process is coming, and it cannot get here fast enough.

Once having cured the world's diseases, A.I. could be directed to solve the many seemingly insoluble problems we all live with daily.  We could even ask it for the solution to the most perplexing question facing mankind: how can men and women coexist without abuse and divorce?  I fear that one might cause a computer meltdown.  But we can hope.

Image: Public Domain Pictures.