Slashdot Mirror

It is possible to produce the effect of a computing machine by writing down a set of rules of procedure and asking a man to carry them out. Such a combination of a man with written instructions will be called a ‘Paper Machine.’ A man provided with paper, pencil and rubber, and subject to strict discipline is in effect a universal machine.

Old designs were not fully explored, ie: Turing's 'intelligent or trainable' machines. This kind of electronics can do those old concepts viable, that's IMO the NEXT BIG THING, not just algorithms (looped circuitry is not hard to simulate, is hard to predict).

The Von newman architecture of our 'computers' was just one possibility, not the only or the best, just the convenient. New hardware processing habilities, could lead to new kinds of maybe not 'programable' in the current sense of the word, but 'trainable' machinery.

This reminds me a lot of the old "top-down" and "bottom-up" arguments about AI. Google has a rather large head start using the top-down method, whereas powerset seems to be building it to be more of a bottom-up approach which will be impressive if it can eventually do it well. For more information: http://www.alanturing.net/turing_archive...

A pertinent example, from the UK this time.

The 'farther' of comuter science Alan Turing was hounded by the authorities in the 50's because of his sexual preferences. This happened despite his invalubale contribution to defeating Hitler.

You need only take a cursory look at the "war on drugs" to see that nothing changes except the target behaviour that is defined as "mentally ill".

Probably the guy is just using AIML and an alicebot, those flash-animated speaking heads on websites based on what is most likely not A.I. Though I seem to remember at least one marketdroid inflicted site call it "true A.I." or something similar. If it's real great but they're going to have to beat Cyc (Read about it.)

Is "True" AI , I have a degree in AI and I've never hear the term "True" AI. This is purely a name that has been pulled out of a hat. Having rtfa , and reading the description this sounds like nothing more than a fairly sophisticated expert system with some connectionist ideas thrown in.

Generally speaking there are two types of AI (GOFAI) "Good Old Fashioned AI" - That which deals with logic based reasoning, semantics and symbolic processing - Think ELIZA and ALICE or simple Chess programs all fit into this category.

The other school of AI - The Connectionist model deals with parallel processing models, neural networks, fuzzy logic and so forth.

It seems to me that GTX have basically used a blend of both these ideas to achieve this. Perhaps using expert system models to encapsulate the knowledge of a salesperson or customer service person. But using connectionist ideas to process speech and other fuzzy input data.

So while their product is quite an interesting one it is nothing new. I think that the term they may have been looking for is "Strong" AI whose aim is to produce machines with an intellectual ability indistinguishable from a human being. A laudable goal no doubt - We have the Turing test for these kinds of things. Question being -Do GTX have the confidence in their product to give it a try? As of today not a single machine has passed the Turing test.

Interesting links

http://www.alanturing.net/turing_archive/pages/Ref erence%20Articles/what_is_AI/What%20is%20AI02.html

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

http://www.cs.ucf.edu/~lboloni/Programming/GofaiWe b/

Nick ...

The IWM website is mistaken. Unfortunately, it's a very common mix-up. Colossus was a very specialised piece of hardware, and was not used on Enigma traffic. You can easily find confirmation if you care to dig into the various references hanging off of the Wikipedia Colossus computer article:

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

I'm afraid the Heath Robinson was indeed called the "Heath Robinson". Here's an actual contemporary document:

      http://www.alanturing.net/turing_archive/archive/t /t17/TR17-004.html

There was also Super Robinson and Old Robinson.

The idea is not new, read the Turing's paper Intelligent Machinery about Pain & Pleasure machines. In short, machines behaves freely but are conditioned by two simple stimulus: 'pain' that forces behaviour to change, and 'pleasure' that stabilizes current behaviour.

If they really want to stay true to the series, then seeing as all the classic episodes had giant, clinking, flashy computers with absolutely no graphical interface and a button for every task to perform, and this film will be set before then, their computers are really going to have to be a hunk of junk.

Something along the lines of this for example.

Turing left a bunch of still new ideas unexplored. Just look at his 48's paper Intelligent Machinery> .

Recurrent connectionism was the starting point, and P machines have not even been explored.

What's in a sig?

Let's not forget a classic: Intelligent Machinery (1948)

Modded Sigs afects Karma

Like destroying Colossus at the end of WWII?

We honor them for winning the war for us with free hormone therapy!

Hey, weren't we fighting the NAZIs because they behaved like that?!!!

a complete list of interesting candidates can be found here. alan definately has my vote, of course, i'm slightly biased in this, given that he's the father of my field (ai). unfortunately, 90+% of people don't know turing's full story --- a lot of people are surprised to find out that he started at bletchley park cracking enigma and ended up committing suicide thinking he was snow white (eating a poisoned apple). it was turing's stored program concept that was the foundation for the von neumann architecture, so in a sense turing is the father of computing in general. anyways, for more info, try here or here

Also www.alanturing.net and also super Turing (its in PDF)

Also www.alanturing.net and also super Turing (its in PDF)