Artificial intelligence has made great advances since the advent of inventions such as robots that can think through difficult problems and cars that can function autonomously, and the future holds even more promise in this developing field.

Collectively as AI, these devices revolve around the idea of computers or other technological systems that are capable of complex thought with little to no human input.

“I think artificial intelligence will be awesome because there’s a lot of medicines that can be developed and a lot of video games that use a lot of awesome AIs, and it makes it more fun when you play with a good AI,” Shaya Zarkesh (10) said.

Chemistry teacher Robbie Korin also believes that advancements in AI have great potential.

“Hopefully we keep [AI] under control so we don’t have that movie thing coming on, but I think it’s probably unlimited as we extend out into the future,” Korin said. “Computers already help in that they do a lot of things fast [for science research]. That’s probably what it’s going to continue [toward]. Connections will just be made faster.”

Scientists also have been incorporating the ideas of AI technology to fulfill medical and health needs with robots that assist surgeons and help diagnose patients.

“In Big Hero 6 [there were AIs] like Baymax, where they can solve healthcare problems,” freshman Constance Horng said. “It’s faster and more efficient.”

Other areas of AI include robots that can be used to solve difficult problems with humanlike thought. IBM created a robot named Deep Blue that could predict chess moves with the highest probability of success and quickly make associations between different game piece placements. When Deep Blue played chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov in 1997, it won two games, Kasparov won one, and there were three draws.

Kasparov believed that he had lost because he could not compete with the large database that the computer had access to.

Watson, also created by IBM as an extension to Deep Blue, competed on the game show Jeopardy! and won in 2011.

Technology that can respond efficiently to road hazards without input from human drivers has also experienced recent developments.

Google has been working on a fleet of self-driving cars since 2009 and has released some on California and Texas roads, while Japanese carmaker Toyota announced plans last Friday to partner with Stanford and MIT research labs to create safer cars that can replace human drivers when needed.

Carnegie Mellon University teamed up with rideshare program Uber in February to create self-driving cars, and many other companies in the field, including Ford, Mercedes Benz and Audi, also have plans to develop autonomous vehicles.

“The one thing I hope that [AI] will do is to make things safer, and the situation that automatically comes to mind is the idea of cars and how if you had thinking cars, you would reduce the number of accidents,” physics teacher Lisa Radice said.

However, despite the positive effects and findings that AI brings to society, some remain skeptical about the outcome of the future with these devices.

“I feel like the standard of living will increase by a lot, but there are also going to be problems,” David Zhu (11) said. “People are going to lose their jobs when [the occupations] become automated.”