Many have played games where NPCs are the most memorable, whether they are astonishingly intelligent of outright hilarious.

For example, League of Legends released a mode nicknamed “Doom Bots” that features AI that seem to be hacking; they dodge your attacks, plan your movements, and at times, are prone to cooperating and ganging up on you when you have no allies nearby.

On the other hand, you have AI similar to LVL. 1 NPCs in Super Smash Bros, who simply follow you around instead of attacking you, and in the end, contradict their purpose and help you win.

Sabiq Kennedy, a freshman at the NYC iSchool, states that “You need a combination… to get a good laugh and enjoy the game.”

While entertaining, AI truly does exist in the real world. And no, the AI is not as intelligent nor globally influential as of that of SkyNet in Terminator: Genysis. Rather, we have IBM Watson.

In 2008, a supercomputer named IBM Watson was created,and has been tested to the point where it could beat human Jeopardy players, all by accessing 200+ million databases. There is common debate on whether Watson could be considered a “real” AI, for while it does have cognitive skills, its intelligence comes from pre-made databases, rather than self-created databases that stem from self-learning.

Alex Anthony Cortes-Ose, a junior at the iSchool, believes that people do not understand what achievements like IBM Watson stand for. “… They don’t realize that Watson and other algorithmic machine-learning systems are more capable of growing ever-powerful.”

However, Mr. Smolka, a physics teacher at the iSchool, understands the power of IBM Watson, and recognizes the dangers of artificial intelligence. “Artificial intelligence will exist within our lifetimes,” he assures us.

“However, AI can be dangerous when given the ability to think for themselves; We must take precaution.”