So many know what the holy grail is as a story of fiction but what would the holy grail look like today in modern times?I think the answer is best represented in the comic book movie franchise Iron Man.
No, I'm not talking about Tony or his badass suits. I'm talking about "J.A.R.V.I.S." Which, stands for Just A Rather Very Intelligent System.
It was initially Tony Stark's natural-language user interface computer system, named after Edwin Jarvis, the butler who worked for Howard Stark. Over time, he was upgraded into an artificially intelligent system, tasked with running a business for Stark Industries as well as security for Tony Stark's Mansion and Stark Tower.
We have all seen the iron man movies at some point I'm sure, so this should be familiar, but what does this have to do with the holy grail? Well, I'm getting to that. So if you are like me, AI or artificial intelligence is what many people believe is the real all mighty "god" of the 21st century. Elon Musk who many see as being the real-life iron man fears what AI will become and be able to do. In computer science, we have this saying "code is the law" and if AI is just a supercomputer running code then what do we have to fear? In the context of "AI" what we really have to worry about is the person writing the code. Right?
Well, this is where I start connecting the holy grail into this. For humans, the most basic and most fundamental interface we have is our spoken language. Speaking is what ultimately connects all humans through speech and the thought that derives that spoken utterance is what makes us "conscious".
So, imagine if you could have the same interface we have between humans but only instead with a computer. Imagine instead of having to code a program from scratch you could just talk? Telling this computer what it is you imagine this program (or anything) to be able to do and the computer compiles it and just figures it out for you. Turning what you said to it into actual reality without you having to think about any of the details under the hood.
This "holy grail of a programing language" is what computer science majors are striving to create in the near future. With this thought, comes to life, as JARVIS. As is in the movie JARVIS is this "holy grail programming language".
Tony Stark's real accomplishment was creating JAVIS which effectively transcended himself into the realm between science fiction's AI, as we imagine it today, and the AI that is the reality millennials will be able to create (in the not so distant future).
The holy grail will not be a supercomputer combined with the "ultimate" data silo which is everything that is broadcasted through the world wide web. Instead, I imagine the holy grail to be more like a "programming language" that acts as an interface between human speech (and physical gestures) and a physical compiler which will be the "supercomputer" that takes in all variable values and figures out how to create exactly what it is we wish from it...AI/>
#holygrail #supercomputer #ironman #JAVIS #AI #nerd