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Exactly - the problem isn't creating an AI physician, the problem is creating an AI physician that you can't lie to blatantly. It would be trivial to create a little program that's little more than an enhanced version of those 20 question balls and runs a differential diagnosis engine; something like that would cover 90% of all diseases after a few rounds. It could show you little pictures like "do your bumps look more like this or more like this?", or any number enhancements. It would probably work incredibly well with honest, impartial patients.

The problem is, it has no way of knowing if you're lying. If you say "yes, when I press hard on this point on my belly it hurts when I let go", the thing has no way of knowing if you pressed on the right place or if it actually hurt. If there's a doctor doing that to you, they'll have a pretty good idea if it hurt.

Really, the best this thing can do is either say "you should see a doctor" or "you should take two acetaminophen and ask me again tomorrow"

Go to http://www.20q.net/ and give the wrong answer to one of those questions.

... may be a site resembling http://www.20q.net/ , which started as a never ending story (neural net) as well.

Quote: "The 20Q was created in 1988 as an experiment in artificial intelligence (AI) The principle is that the player thinks of something and the 20Q artificial intelligence asks a series of questions before guessing what the player is thinking. This artificial intelligence learns on its own with the information relayed back to the players who interact with it, and is not programmed. The player can answer these questions with: Yes, No, Unknown, or Sometimes. The experiment is based on the classic word game of Twenty Questions, and on the computer game "Animals," popular in the early 1970s, which used a somewhat simpler method to guess an animal."

CC.

http://www.20q.net/startg_enUS.html

Pit it against 20Q. Come up with a random thing, and have 20Q ask questions while WA gives answers, and see if the two together can figure out what I was thinking of. My guess is that the questions will be too bizarre for WA to handle ("is electricity an animal, vegetable, or mineral?"), but it should be interesting.

Check out http://www.20q.net/ . It's a neural network that's been put online for quite some time and does exactly what you describe. It's very interesting to note the final question that determines your answer; Here's me playing vs 20q: I was thinking of a lampshade.
Q20. I am guessing that it is a lamp shade? Right, Wrong, Close
19. Does it weigh more than a duck? No.
18. Is it found on a desk? Sometimes.
17. Is it larger than a microwave oven (or bread box)? Sometimes.
16. Do you use it at night? Sometimes.
15. Is some part of it made of glass? No.
14. Is it worn? No.
13. Is it decorative? Yes.
12. Is it pleasurable? No.
11. Does it move air? No.
10. Is it black? Sometimes.
9. Is it square shaped? No.
8. Can it be easily moved? Yes.
7. Does it beep? No.
6. Can you talk on it? No.
5. Does it usually have four corners? No.
4. Is it larger than a pound of butter? Yes.
3. Does it get wet? No.
2. Do you hold it when you use it? No.
1. It is classified as Other.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byte

Byte, Kilobyte, Megabyte, Gigabyte, Terabyte, Petabyte, Exabyte, Zettabyte, Yottabyte.

Interesting to note that from Terabyte onwards aren't in the default word dictionary for Firefox v2.0.0.9.

Anyhow, what would be in a futuristic one-terabyte OS? Well, name something your operating system does now and imagine how it could be better. Instead of a calendar, an entire multimedia almanac. Instead of a system clock, a functional world (or possibly even off-world/world-neutral) clock. Text-to-speech and speech-to-text functionality for every major planetary language in a variety of voices, intonations, accents, ages, etc. Building upon the usual game of 20 questions which has already been packaged as a toy that can guess what you're thinking a significant amount of the time, add a Q&A service that can answer all kinds of questions "Does it rain more each year in Chicago or Los Angeles?" "What industries is the government currently subsidizing? What about in Canada? China?" and so on. You'd probably have an entire copy of wikipedia (or something comparable) on your local machine. Keep in mind that at the time when we have an operating system 1 terabyte in size, we'll probably also have much faster internet connections, larger higher-resolution monitors, and so on. You could get incremental updates to the monstrous database that backs the AI engine that answers these sorts of questions (and the almanac mentioned before).

Consider also that some of the best monitors out there have a maximum resolution of 2560x1900 (Dell/Apple 30" flat panels). That's today. What about when this future date comes? What will visual imaging (ie, photographic) technology bring us? What if every picture on wikipedia were of high enough quality to count the freckles on someone's face or the hairs on an animal's body? That surely would add to the size of the database. The multimedia almanac I mention could have incredibly high-resolution photographs and videos. As it stands today, multimedia are the end-user's biggest storage hogs. This also assumes we're still using two-dimensional displays by that time and not 3-d volumetric displays, which would increase the storage demands of multimedia significantly.

Also, what is an operating system? Here's the (sizable, for a Slashdot comment) introduction from the Wikipedia article on the "Operating system" topic: "An operating system (OS) is the software that manages the sharing of the resources of a computer and provides programmers with an interface used to access those resources. An operating system processes system data and user input, and responds by allocating and managing tasks and internal system resources as a service to users and programs of the system. At the foundation of all system software, an operating system performs basic tasks such as controlling and allocating memory, prioritizing system requests, controlling input and output devices, facilitating networking and managing file systems. Most operating systems come with an application that provides a user interface for managing the operating system, such as a command line interpreter or graphical user interface. The operating system forms a platform for other system software and for application software."

Let's start here: "Software that manages the sharing of resources and provides programmers with an interface to access those resources." Who is a programmer today? Somebody sitting in an office, manipulating arcane bits and bytes into something everyone can use. What if, in the future, the operating system provided this functionality to the end-user in a way they could utilize? To draw a parallel: did the computer on ST:TNG have more than an operating system? You ask it to do something, and it does it, no applications necessary. Being able to do anything you wanted with any piece of information was something that specific computer was

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byte

Byte, Kilobyte, Megabyte, Gigabyte, Terabyte, Petabyte, Exabyte, Zettabyte, Yottabyte.

Interesting to note that from Terabyte onwards aren't in the default word dictionary for Firefox v2.0.0.9.

Anyhow, what would be in a futuristic one-terabyte OS? Well, name something your operating system does now and imagine how it could be better. Instead of a calendar, an entire multimedia almanac. Instead of a system clock, a functional world (or possibly even off-world/world-neutral) clock. Text-to-speech and speech-to-text functionality for every major planetary language in a variety of voices, intonations, accents, ages, etc. Building upon the usual game of 20 questions which has already been packaged as a toy that can guess what you're thinking a significant amount of the time, add a Q&A service that can answer all kinds of questions "Does it rain more each year in Chicago or Los Angeles?" "What industries is the government currently subsidizing? What about in Canada? China?" and so on. You'd probably have an entire copy of wikipedia (or something comparable) on your local machine. Keep in mind that at the time when we have an operating system 1 terabyte in size, we'll probably also have much faster internet connections, larger higher-resolution monitors, and so on. You could get incremental updates to the monstrous database that backs the AI engine that answers these sorts of questions (and the almanac mentioned before).

Consider also that some of the best monitors out there have a maximum resolution of 2560x1900 (Dell/Apple 30" flat panels). That's today. What about when this future date comes? What will visual imaging (ie, photographic) technology bring us? What if every picture on wikipedia were of high enough quality to count the freckles on someone's face or the hairs on an animal's body? That surely would add to the size of the database. The multimedia almanac I mention could have incredibly high-resolution photographs and videos. As it stands today, multimedia are the end-user's biggest storage hogs. This also assumes we're still using two-dimensional displays by that time and not 3-d volumetric displays, which would increase the storage demands of multimedia significantly.

Also, what is an operating system? Here's the (sizable, for a Slashdot comment) introduction from the Wikipedia article on the "Operating system" topic: "An operating system (OS) is the software that manages the sharing of the resources of a computer and provides programmers with an interface used to access those resources. An operating system processes system data and user input, and responds by allocating and managing tasks and internal system resources as a service to users and programs of the system. At the foundation of all system software, an operating system performs basic tasks such as controlling and allocating memory, prioritizing system requests, controlling input and output devices, facilitating networking and managing file systems. Most operating systems come with an application that provides a user interface for managing the operating system, such as a command line interpreter or graphical user interface. The operating system forms a platform for other system software and for application software."

Let's start here: "Software that manages the sharing of resources and provides programmers with an interface to access those resources." Who is a programmer today? Somebody sitting in an office, manipulating arcane bits and bytes into something everyone can use. What if, in the future, the operating system provided this functionality to the end-user in a way they could utilize? To draw a parallel: did the computer on ST:TNG have more than an operating system? You ask it to do something, and it does it, no applications necessary. Being able to do anything you wanted with any piece of information was something that specific computer was

I just have to wonder what a person in the 70's would think about some things that we do have, such as this, and this. While these simple examples are clearly no HAL 9000, I think that a person back then might not be able to tell the difference.

This has always been the best place to ask questions.

Anyone reading this have the game and can give a brief summary as to what it is? Is it a glorifed Magic 8 Ball? The game 20 questions for the DS?

20 Questions is not where it's really at in artificial intelligence.

Mind.Forth is the True AI you're not supposed to know about.

Stumble upon Forbidden Knowledge in artificial intelligence and you could be in danger because you Know Too Much.

Slashdot readers figure out the Hidden Truth for themselves.

914pcbots.com is the Forbidden A.I. Zone where techies discuss installing secret AI Minds in PC-based robots but: Hush! (It's a big secret -- Forbidden Knowledge).

Novamente is another truth-will-out story of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI).

AGI Mail List is where the l33t heavyweights talk about Artificial General Intelligence.

AGI Secret Archive is where you may eat of the fruit of the tree of the Forbidden Knowledge about artificial general intelligence.

Lasciate ogni esperanza, voi che entrate .

In fact, fellow nerds, just give me a link to ONE impressive piece of AI software (that isn't a chess player) and I'll be bowled over.

I quite like 20 question. Actually this sort of thing is not too hard. I once wrote a simple game that did this (animals only, just searching down a tree) and people I showed it to were quite impressed.

Play 20Q!

1. It is classified as Other.
2. Is it usually colorful? No.
Does it break if dropped? Unknown.
Does it come in a box? Unknown.
3. Do you hold it when you use it? No.
4. Is it manufactured? Yes.
Is it an electro-mechanical device? Unknown.
5. Is it found on a desk? Rarely.
6. Is it smaller than a loaf of bread? Yes.
7. Would you find it in an office? Doubtful.
8. Is it round? Yes.
9. Is it black? Yes.
10. Does it come in many varieties? No.
11. Does it roll? No.
12. Is it a tool? No.
13. Does it have a hard outer shell? No.
14. Do you wear it? No.
15. Can it be used more than once? Yes.
16. Can it be used for recreation? Yes.
17. Do you use it in your home? No.
18. Can you play games with it? Yes.
19. I guessed that it was a hockey puck? Wrong.
20. I guessed that it was a basketball net? Wrong.
21. Is it flat? Yes.
22. Does it usually have four corners? No.
23. I guessed that it was a trampoline? Wrong.
24. Is it something you bring along? No.
25. Does it get wet? No.
26. Was it used over 100 years ago? No.
27. Is it commonly used? No.
28. Can you make sounds with it ? No.
29. I guessed that it was a hologram? Wrong.

Eh, worth a shot.

Try playing a game with mp3 player as the object. Took it 28 guesses to find it for me. Tried to post the results, but slashdot thinks question marks are lame.

And yes, it asked the breadbox question.

...in only 20 questions! :) http://www.20q.net/

This web site gives a nice example of what I meant in my above post...