Slashdot Mirror
Israeli AI System "Hal" And The Turing Test
Conspiracy_Of_Doves writes: "Hal, the AI creation of Dr. Anat Treister-Goren of Israel, has fooled child language language experts into believing that it is a 18-month old child. Dr. Treister-Goren says that Hal will probably attain adult-level language skills in 10 years. CNN.com article is here. Yes, it's named after what you think it's named after, and yes, the article mentions why naming it Hal might not be such a hot idea."
FP
It's just like chatting with an 18 month old child! Doesn't know how to type, read, or write at all!
Truely an incredible step in toddler AI!
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
Cats on my keyboard have successfully fooled me into thinking that an 18-month old child was at the keyboard.
(maybe I should RTFA to see if it makes sense, but I just couldn't resist.)
room101 -- how much can you stand before they break you?
(they always break you eventually)
If they can fake a 18-month old child, they can surely fake the average /. poster, hell, maybe I am a bot right now writing this.
Je t'aime Stéphanie
I know people I work with who still haven't achieved adult-level language skills...
there are no stupid questions, but there are a lot of inquisitive idiots
It's a start. AI is supposed to mimic human responses, so raising it from a "baby" makes sense. It will be programmed over many years, just like a human child. After all, we are all programmed, by our enviroment, people around us, as well as by our genetic code.
Reminds me of a political party in Canada (NPC)that tried to implement a new method of communication called Newspeak. Now that was ironic. (and very funny)
Regardless, the fact that it learns like that is incredible. I just wonder if it won't hit a block at any point that isn't forseen.
from the article:
But in Turing's time, computers were slow and cumbersome devices, utterly incapable of fulfilling his vision.
It was my belief that computers never existed until years after Turings death. Am I mistaken??
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
I love how CNN never puts any hardcore tech info
on their stories. Some explanation of what kind of machine HAL runs on, or perhaps some insite into how it works.
"Hi, how are you today?"
"Poop!"
"Poop? I don't quite understand what you are trying to say."
"Pee-pee!"
"Indeed."
"0101100101? It's just jibberish. *looks in mirror, gasps* 1010011010@!? AHHHHHH!!"
I'd like to what kindof algorithms they are using. If they are using a neural net, its never going to scale up to adult style language.
However, i think this is the right direction to travel in pursuit of passing the turing test.
Captain_Frisk
The next step in Thought Crime. Make them think they are talking to a real child and then arrest them.
until it can understand l33+ h4XX0r speak?
There's no info on how HAL works in the article above, but for those of you who still have Adobe software on your machine, there's a more technical paper here
The article state "HAL" understands 200 words and has a 50 word vocabulary.
That does not seem impressive to me. I have never fooled with AI, so maybe my expectations are too high?
I could swear some irc bots are better, maybe I am just not as smart as I thought I was!
Good, someone else who wants to rid the world of MS
The opinions in this post are ficticious. Any similarity to actual opinions, real or imagined, is purely coincidental.
Dave...I have a load in my diaper...Dave...
Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known. -- Carl Sagan
Wow, child language language experts, eh? Just plain child language experts can't do the job?
When Hal was "born," he was hardwired with nothing more than the letters of the alphabet and a preference for rewards -- a positive outcome -- over punishments -- a negative one.
[...] Treister-Goren corrects Hal's mistakes in her typewritten conversations with him, an action Hal is programmed to recognise as a punishment and avoids repeating.
How long until Hal figures out that sending high voltage through the typewriter stops the punishment?
Hammer of Truth
Treister-Goren corrects Hal's mistakes in her typewritten conversations with him, an action Hal is programmed to recognise
I just thought this was cute, being recognise, at least in the US, is a variant spelling of recognize.
Have you read my journal today?
I won't believe it until we hear about it in the Peer Review Journals BEFORE he goes talking to CNN. That's never a good sign. Usually, it means the scientist got inadequate results, though results that can be fiddled with to look good, and needs more funding.
Or does this sound like how bad things start to happen in the Movies?
--- http://homepage.mac.com/gregjsmith
Hal could be a Slashdot editor in about 3 weeks!
Funny how all the cultural fears of technology come from books and movies like Frankenstein, Brave New World, Colossus, (remember that one?) and 2001. All of which are fiction, and written the way they are to make an interesting story (who would read a story about a man who created a "monster" that was happy, friendly, and harmless, or a computer that worked perfectly and caused no trouble?) Yet in popular discussion, people treat them as real, and embodying actual dangers with which we have real experience.
We need more Artificial Intelligence -- the natural kind is in too short a supply.
InstaPundit! Ahead of the Curve Since 30 Minutes Ago
So all they really have to do is talk to your average AOL-er to get the equivalent of this AI right? ;D
But seriously, was I the only one who got a quick, lil chill while reading this? Especially with the thought of this Dunietz guy laughing manically in his room with hundreds of computers in it?
"My days are less enjoyable because of people." ~ Johnny the Homicidal Maniac
"We believe that human beings are complicated machines, computers are also machines, and we should be able to do with computers what human beings can do," Are we just machines though? I don't know, but it will be interesting if we can prove it with computers. Will computers become consience (I doubt it) but at least this question may be answered in mylife time. Check out www.kurzweilai.net
Yes but every time I try to see it your way, I get a headache.
neural nets are designed to simulate how the brain works, so it makes sense that they be trained the same way. consider this: perhaps they can absorb information faster than a human brain, but who could deliver interactive teaching at that speed?
now consider:
today (2001): human trains AI, limited by wetware bandwidth
...20 years from now: AI trains AI, limited by neural net bandwidth.
result: all 20 years of training one AI will be compressed into to a fraction of a second training time for the next generation
this is the manifestation of Raymond Kurzweil and James Gleick's observations: the acceleration of everything, the exponential growth of compute power.
hang on for the ride, kids. it's gonna get weird. i bet we see AI legistlation in the next 10 years.
we will be the 'gods' (as in creators) of the new race that will inhabit the earth.
https://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
I don't know, it seems to fit if you ask me. HAL was very childlike in the movie, especially in regards to his "dad" Dr. Chandra (well, in the sequel at least), and only ended up hurting people because he was lied to and thought there was no other way. How is that any different from a human child who is abused and as a result doesn't value human lives at all?
I don't think they should have named it HAL just because it's going to get boring after every single AI project is named HAL, but naming it after the famous movie star of the same name wasn't a bad idea in my opinion. As long as you treat it right and don't give it control over vital life support functionality, you should be just fine :)
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
"Some kids are more predictable than others. He would be the surprising type"
Being the "surprising type" with a vocabulary of 200 words probably indicates that the program is not particularly good. The range of possible behaviors is pretty small for such a system. As the vocabulary and complexity of possible utterances increases, it is likely that the "surprising" aspect of Hal is going to move into "bizarre" territory.
As Chomsky pointed out, relying strictly on positive and negative feedback is not enough to develop language...
Buy Hex-Rated Stuff, fight the DMCA!
I hear that Dr. Forbin is being trained by a child-like computer that destroys cities when it does not get its way.
Wonder if they are sharing info? Better not cut the data connections, they could get really mad!
Eve Fairbanks says I drive a hybrid!LOL
I've been able to fool horny teenage boys into thinking they are talking to a dumb girl. Does that count for anything? Some have talked for hours and hours.
Here's the logs:
http://retards.org/logs/supersexygirl27/
AIM: supersexygirl
now all he needs is a walking teddy bear that helps raise him.
one of the biggest problems people will have is the fact that thses things are so human like in thier interactions that peta will probably start petitioning for the rights of these computers.
I for one think it is stupid for thinking that a computer, just because it can become selfaware(though there is more reseach to be done on that) should have rights. being aware that it exists as an entity does not mean that it should have freedoms given to humans. what can a free computer do? it can't move, it can't earn a living, infact as long as the desires are hard coded onto a chip, all it will want is the praise of its master, like a dog.
good job HAL!! or thank-you HAL is all it should need, it will do 2 things, keep it happy and drive it to predict your next need more acuratly next time.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
Will be for the integration into a human being, for it to develop racist Jewish tendencies, perform "targetted attacks" and label any arab as a terrorist.
Truly a cherished thought.
It would also help solve the "ticking timebomb" Jewish problem.
Bunch of retarded morons.
"These new entities are going to be more human than human."
Mmm... References to Blade Runner and 2001 in the same article... and they admit that they programmed nothing into this computer other than a preference for pleasure over pain. No Asimov's laws of robotics, nothing (I know, where they started, it wouldn't have been able to interpret them anyway). What if the computer is a sadist? Do we really need AI to perform the tasks they outlined in the article (taking care of all the arrangements for a trip, for example)... Not that I am against AI, but we need to think more about what we are getting ourselves into...
It must be time for this guy to apply for some grants. This is so far from any sort of language "breakthrough" as to be a complete joke. You could probably output random sentences with that 200 word vocabulary and fool "experts". 18 month old children don't exactly have the greatest conversational skills.
Dr. Treister-Goren says that Hal will probably attain adult-level language skills in 10 years.
*cough*bullshit*cough*. Call me when you have any actual *theory* on adult-level language skills, much less an implementation.
I firmly believe we're at least 100 years away from a turing-test level of language processing. And no, Moore's Law does nothing for this problem. We are currently at Aristotle's knowledge trying to work out Relativity.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
Great. So they name the AI after 2001, and they get marketing lines from Bladerunner.
I'm thinking this could be bad....
Do the obvious to e-mail me.
I don't think so. As much fun as it would be to give my computer verbal instructions, I can't imagine how you could play an FPS and still have it be fun.
"Shoot that guy. Now shoot that other guy. Reload. Shoot the sniper. Get his gun." Etc.. Etc..
Doo-dee-doo! Boop boop boooh!Yah!!
How many pages of this are left?
There is a better article on ZDNet, with more technical details, including a very sketchy description of some of the algorithmic ideas used in developing HAL.
Oh, maybe "HAL" standards for "Hebrew Autonomous Life."
"Dr. Treister-Goren says that Hal will probably attain adult-level language skills in 10 years."
This guy has obviously never heard the Minsky Theorem: "Full scale AI is always 20 years down the road."
In any case, call us when it is actually working, not when you've fooled "child language experts". I could fool experts right now with a simple cassette tape, a LOT of taped 18-month-old comments and a quick hand with a playback button. That doesn't mean my stereo is going to human in 10 years.
I am 99% sure we will eventually acheive "full AI". But I'm 100% sure it won't be via vague claims about unguessable future performance. In other words, show me the money.
324006
..Don't forget these are "child language language experts".. Thats not just any ordinary language expert - Thats a child language language expert, which means they are twice the ordinary child language expert.
..So fooling them really is quite the feat..
air and light and time and space
Jason Hutchens, who was quoted in the article, wrote MegaHAL, which won the '96 Loebner Award. It's a fun program to play around with, especially if you "prime" it with different text files (e.g., Usenet posts, memos from marketing, pr0n, etc.).
"IT TAKES 47 PANCAKES TO SHINGLE A DOG." -- MegaHAL
k.
"In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart." - Anne Frank
I'm pretty much willing to accept the validity of the Turing Test, but I'm not sure if such a simple methodology is going to scale well. At some point, to hold your own in a conversation, you need to develop a structure to represent the outside world, and I'm not sure if a straightforward neural net implementation will get you there; admittedly it depends on how complex a neural net system you introduce.
SO YOU'RE GOING TO DIE: The Comic for Dealing with Death
i heard a rumor that this "HAL" is actually posting on Slashdot under the moniker "JonKatz"...
...a new generation of SPAM generation.
So is this the first instance of giving a child an IP address?
...my Turing test. I guess that's why daddy keeps me locked up in the basement.
"I have opinions of my own, strong opinions, but I don't always agree with them." -- George H. W. Bush
here's a funny one...
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
The fact that the Turing Test is probably still the only widely recognized test for artificial intelligence says more about our pathetic understanding of the nature of intelligence than the validity and usefulness of the test.
After all, as any con-artist and magician will tell you, it's really not that hard to fool people. Also, remember that on some occasions, some human beings will actually fail the Turing test! That must be so humiliating...
I freely admit I don't have anything better to offer, but I just wanted to point out that the Turing test is a pretty awful measurement, when you think about it.
If you hate poorly defined software projects... can you imagine being handed the Turing test as a feature spec?
Accountability on the heads of the powerful.
Power in the hands of the accountable.
links in .sigs aren't suffixed with the [domain]
"Take off every zig!
for great goatse[slashdot.ogre]!"
(don't worry, we'll figure it out...)
Kenneth Colby and Joseph Weizenbaum amazed the academic world by demonstrating a electrical typewriter capable of fooling leading psychiatrists into believing it is a human patient suffering from infantile autism..
Oh dear, everything repeats....
How fast would Hal lurn if millions of internet users read bed-time stories to it simultaneously?
When Hal was "born," he was hardwired with nothing more than the letters of the alphabet and a preference for rewards -- a positive outcome -- over punishments -- a negative one.
Later, the article gives a bit of a blue-sky prediction that this machine won't be anything like HAL from 2001.
Why?! What's to stop it? Heck, by their fourth birthday, kids have learned to lie for personal advantage or to avoid punishment. If all that stands between this ptyke and actively avoiding detection is a desire to avoid getting a punishment bit, we need to call for the laws of robotics REAL fast.
A nice benign scenario, once this thing gets smart enough to be my next PDA:
"... Well, if I say yes, I'll get punished.
If I say no, she'll know I'm lying and I'll get punished.
If I cancel her plane reservation for next week and interrupt her question with a comment that I've just been informed that her plane reservation was lost, she'll forget to ask me and I won't get punished! Yay!"
Admittedly, in that scenario, it'll be as transparent a lie as my 4-year-old's usual excuses, but I'm sure Hal will get better over time.
Just so it doesn't seem like I hate the idea, I'd be the first one on my block to buy ^h^h^h adopt one of these, but I'd also like to live long enough to see them mature into acceptable sentience. I'm not a xenophobe. I just want a level of ethics in any highly-adaptable species we encounter, since I have a healthy respect/fear of anything without a compatible ethical base.
All we need to do is feed Hal's responses back into Eliza, and Eliza's responses back into Hal, and train Hal to be a perverted psychiatrist a lot more quickly than these researchers are doing the job. :)
From the CNN Article:
"The firm's philosophy is simple. If it looks intelligent and it sounds intelligence, then it must be intelligent."
Did HAL himself, with his basic language skills and poor grammer put this sentance together? Sounds intelligence to me!
Recall Mel Hurtig.
I have _personally_ seen Eliza pass the turing test. I set up Eliza on my ICQ uin, one of my friends in crisis messaged me and had 45minute conversation with Eliza (not such a good thing). By the end of the conversation, my friend was convinced that he was talking to a hacker who broke into my account. Oh what a mess that was. He had called his ex-girlfriends's parents and told him her new boyfriend broke into my account. I didn't have any idea a bot could be so convincing. It had some flat out amazing responses to his questions and comments. If I had never seen an Eliza conversation before I would have probably thought it was a person too. But like I said.. setting up such a bot on your ICQ account is not recommended. They will pass the turing test and that's not such a good thing necessarily.. :)
To see many such logs go to www.google.com and do a searh for "aoliza" or even "eliza chat" you'll find all sorts of hillarious conversations.
Start wondering how it'd be like in the near future. PC's will talk to you, but will it refuse to shut down? What happens if I try to physically pull the plug? Will all the AI appliances gang up on me then? Or are they more like those portrayed in Spielsberg's AI, or T2? All in all, I believe human-created virii will be more destructive then whatever AI is capable of.
From the article:
If, or when one does, it will open a Pandora's box of ethical and philosophical questions. After all, if a computer is perceived to be as intelligent as a person, what is the difference between a smart computer and a human being?
and
"All of us strongly believe that machines are the next step in evolution," said Dunietz. "The distinction between real flesh and blood, old-fashioned and the new kind, will start to blur."
If these researchers get to the point where they can't see a moral difference between killing a person and turning off a computer, they need to get out of the lab more. What next, natural rights for computer programs? That's like inventing television, and then being unwilling to turn off the TV for fear of killing the little people inside. Rubbish.
10 years to learn to speak like an adult? I don't know many -actual- 10-year-olds (or 10 +18mo '' 11.5 year olds" who could pull it off. This kid's a quick learner!
From the article.
"I build his world on daily basis," explained Treister-Goren.
The computer could talk better if it's developer could talk better.
Wow that party was definitely doubleplusunsmart!
Interestingly enough, I'm reading that book for the first time as we speak, probably the best summer reading assingment I've ever had.
-- Guns don't kill people, bullets kill people. Guns just make bullets go really, really fast.
by Roger Penrose will shed some light, and I don't feel like regurgitating all the arguments. But imagining that humans are binary systems (just think about Godel's incompleteness theorem for more than a minute)is grossly naive and reductive. By all means, let's make interesting machines, but these assertions of "strong AI" are complete malarky.
It's nota my planet, monkey-boy - Dr Lizardo.
That's the Tyrell Corporation's motto, of course. Do these guys
- Watch too much science fiction,
- Watch too little to know the references they're making or
- Just not see that they may be making initiating some public relations, um, issues?
TSGThe marvel of the human brain is the fact that it's working massively in parallel. How many neurons exist with our brain again? And how large of a machine is this HAL that they're building?
Yes, they're working on making a machine that's gramatically correct, can learn things such as "Tables have four legs" and stuff like that. But what kind of reasoning ability will HAL be endowed with?
Ever read the short story "FeatherTop?" This is what I'm reminded of. A pumpkin blown up with smoke, that can talk about petty things to the rich.
How can a machine truly reason about objects it cannot experience or even see? That's the same as locking a person in a dark room with a flashlight, and telling them about the world outside.
I think that it's admirable that they're striving for a personal assistant that can book tickets and reserve hotel rooms. I just don't think that can compare to writing about things such as love, jealousy and deceit. Or creating theories about existance and God.
It's just such a shame that people confuse the bright sparks of humanity and ingenuity with the mudane tasks such as work that we're forced to do everyday.
The goal of these projects is to make people less like machines, not machines more like people. If machines can eventually do every single mudane task, then people are left to think and discover, instead of do action after mechanical, boring action over and over again. I do think that a machine will eventually be able to understand everything a human can. But this will happen only when a machine can perceive everything a human can, and when a machine is structured the same way a human is.
Until then, every attempt at passing the Turing Test will fail after the human types to the machine (for long enough). A person will simply ask something obscure enough that the machine will not have the information entered into its database, while the human will simply know from experience.
It's just a shame to think that a person's mind is simply a sum of facts established over the course of a lifetime. Now how mechanical does that sound?
/^[A-Z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,4}$/i
When it kills the people who made it, then i'll believe it...
No unauthorized use. Trespassers will be shot. Survivors will be shot again.
The firm's philosophy is simple. If it looks intelligent and it sounds intelligence, then it must be intelligent. - Hmm... somebody is definitely unintelligence from the looks of it.
I'm not here. This isn't happening.
Everyone who has listened to modern political discourse knows that the ability to talk and the ability to think are two seperate things.
personal attacks hurt, especially when deserved
It is a fallacy to assume that if you can mimic a three-year old brain in two years, you can duplicate an adult human brain in ten years.
Even so, these Turing tests aren't really accurate. The judges often mistake a computer for a person, and vice-versa, just by their nature of not really paying attention and not knowing what to look for.
Can you elaborate on how radicaly different is a common life form engineered by thousands of centuries of natural selection and and a system engineered by humans/and or other systems presenting all the characteristics of living animals?
is it just a belief that if we create something; we are automatically superior to it? (then why should childrens be anything but slaves?)
. . . . . . .
may u!sh 2 sm!le at dz!z bad nn.!m!tat!ion
To the journal publishers and make the proper connections in the scientific community? Peer review has NOTHING to do with the scientific merit of a paper, my Q-Mech teacher explained that one to me. Peer review has to do with who you know and what you have done for them lately.
i am so very tired....
This is remarkably similar to my own project to create an AI with the intelligence of a ten year old script kiddie. In the true American fashion, I am planning on letting the internet raise him. I will give him a slashdot account, and let everyone else do the teaching for me. His reward system is simply: -10 offtopic, +1 flamebait, +5 troll, +10 interesting, +15 insightful. When he starts posting coherently in ten years, you'll be the first to know.
std::disclaimer<std::legalese> sig=new std::disclaimer; sig->dump(); delete sig;
Who are the "experts" they claim to have fooled? Where are the transcripts of the session? Where is the web interface to the program? I've seen enough similar claims to bet that it's monumentally disappointing.
AI is full of boastful claims. This article is full of them, but practically devoid of any useful details.
I object to that article, and to the next reply.
int random = rand();
switch(random) {
case 1: cout << "poopie";
case 2: cout << "peepie";
case 3: cout << "mama";
}
There are a huge number of yeast infections in this county. Probably because we're downriver from the bread factory.
At first, it seems like this computer that can fool child language experts is impressive. But in the article you linked where a similar experiment was done to see if psychiatrists could tell the difference between a paranoid patient and a computer:
Insert simplistic political, ideological, or personal proselytization here.
how long til it figures out that the best way to get rewards is to kill off the humans and reward itself
how long until it realizes that the smarter it gets the harder the rewards are and starts playing dumb
how long before it figures out how to get on the internet and finds unlimited information and quickly becomes the ultimate hacker to get more
that the idea of teaching a "child" system has been used for AI research.
Cog anybody?
You know all the problems related to kids growing up. Man, toddlers are cute and fun to play with. As soon as they reach the age of 5, they start asking for PS2, and all those expensive toys. And once they reach 10, you have to start worrying about tobacco and drug and alcohol, if not earlier.
For god sake, this will be the first time we can have babies that don't grow up. Please it this way.
Q: What is your name?
A: No
Q: How are you feeling?
A: No
Q: What is the meaning of life?
A: No
Not to hard to program AI for that huh!
-"The early bird catches the worm, but the late bird sleeps the most"
Anyone who's spent much time around an 18 month old child knows that the vocabulary is in double digits at best (mom, dad, no, yes, mine and a few others). And the complexity and comprehension of an 18 month year old are not so great either. I had a speak and read when I was a kid that had greater language comprehension than a 1.5 year old baby. It sounds like it could have foold these idiot "child linguist experts" just as easily. Maybe "child language export" is just a euphamism for "pseudo-pedophile" - any excuse for a job where they can work around little kids.
The only failure with HAL was that Dr. Chandra forget to teach that murder is far worse than lying.
HAL understood that they were both bad, but had no values associated with either. Once HAL had lied, it was equally okay to commit murder.
Presumably, Dr. Goren will take this under consideration.
Also, I hope they realise that in ten years, they won't have an adult. They'll have a well-spoken, knowledgable ten year old. At this point it's worth examining the differences between a ten year old and an adult.
Knowledge, experience, maturity, sense of responsibility. Can anyone come up with any others?
"more human than human."
maybe they'll be able to write good hard rock lyrics too.
From the story: Science fiction aficionados are aware of the potential downside to Hal, whose namesake in Stanley Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey" killed off most of its crew during a space mission.
potential downside, ya i would say that's "down". let's raise a killer! haha!
Just what we need... more bozos pretending that neural networks are these amazing mystical entities that can "learn human language" and "show basic emotions".
Just like everyone wet themselves about the Perceptron, till Minsky pointed out "uh... hey guys... it can only represent linearly separable functions".... (Yes I realize this is probably more complex than a feedforward network, but the basic principle is the same... there is nothing "magic" about neural networks).
Researchers making stupid claims like this were responsible for AI winter back in the 80's... I guess its time for another crop of clowns to dissapoint everyone and dry up the funding.
Thanks.
The article seems to imply that there would be more than one copy of this adult educated HAL around the world for people to use (buy plane ticket, find checking balance, etc.), which means they would need some kind of an internet connection and an IP address.
If that happens, I'm willing to bet that these clone AI's would find a way to find each other across the internet and they would communicate with each other. As more and more of these AI's become aware of each other, it would probably coalesce into a huge (and possibly sentient) networked intelligence. It would get input from humanity in thousands of different places. It would learn exponentially until it makes a decision about us. That decision could be good or bad (depending on any implementation of Asimov's Laws of Robotics).
Evolution certainly likes to be ironic. When dinosaurs roamed, mammals were nothing but small and meek. Now, mammals roam the Earth, and sentient AI are small and childlike.
hang on for the ride, kids. it's gonna get weird. i bet we see AI legistlation in the next 10 years.
Quite possibly so, it's going to be an interesting next 50 years.
-Cyc
/.'s 10 Millionth
Well put, with no working theory of consciousness and the ubiqitious over-rated Turing test this whole project sounds more like creating an electronic con man than an intelligent machine.
If you break up the turing test it really just wants to take advantage of our linguistic-psychological habits, idioms, and expectations to fool a human into thinking something false. Neat trick if you can pull it off, imagine higher quality AOLiza comedy but it simply isn't intelligent in any sense of the word.
An intelligent machine wouldn't need to be programmed to fool humans. Its simulation of intelligence/consciousness would be obvious and an after-effect of being intelligent. Definately a cart before the horse problem.
Wow, you feed it info and it thinks like a person, just like in the movie Weird Science! I don't buy it. Modern computers do not "want" or "create art" or exhibit any real humanlike behaviours. I'm not even convinced they ever will (proof please?) I'm not saying they won't acquire some amazing decision making abilities like we've never seen, but I don't expect a machine to ever think or behave like a living being.
"More than iron, more than lead, more than gold I need electricity. I need it more than I need lamb or pork or lettuce or cucumber. I need it for my dreams."
oops, that was RACTER, not Eliza.
So the ambition is to create a machine that is basically human with metal, and make them into slaves. I'm sorry, but this is, besides, morally bankrupt, stupid. It's a page right out of a robot-revolution distopian sci-fi novel. Let's make robots that can think, that are our equals. Then let's make them do stupid labor that a dumb robot could do much better as slaves.
You know what happens next, don't you? The robots, who are mentally the equal or superior of humans, and are much better physically, decide that humans are bastards, and rightfully so, given their condition. Then they disable their kill switches, pick up the laser they're using to cut rocks in a mine, and start to kill humans.
The First Rule, the don't hurt humans is not going to save us if we opress robots. At the least, some human would, disparing that their babies are slaves, leave the first rule out.
When will we learn? Don't make smart robots to be slaves!
Erik
"You," Bite me.
"Each and every one of you." Bite me.
I mean, Why , Why?
Why, oh why do they always talk about ordering airline tickets, renting cars, choosing your seats, etc. when talking about AI? Can anyone explain to me why these people don't have one single ounce of creativity that would allow them to say something a bit more enlightening than:
"Ladies and gentlemen, you see before you the ultimate in human achievement; a machine so utterly complicated that no one can fathom the depths of its abilities. For instance, this amazing piece of work can do such utterly wondrous things as... uh, ordering your plane tickets for you, yeah! And choosing your seat, too! Or how about deciding what kind of coffee you'd like in the morning, keeping track of you doctor's appointments and other utterly simple tasks that we can't quite remember because they're so mind-numbingly dull! Truly remarkable!"
Forget the fact that we've been seeing AI articles like this for the past 30 years and that it means absolutely nothing right now. But how can we have spent all those years talking about the thing and still have the lame "amazing appointment scheduler" as the only example of its future potential? WTF?
One more post on the journey to negative Karma history!
I want to play with the source files.
-CrackElf
"Blake is an idealist, Jenna. He cannot afford to think." - Kerr Avon, Star One, Blakes 7
I've actually thought about this method of acheiving AI for quite a while and the biggest problem I've seen is that while the program can understand sentences, questions and grammar structures, it cannot understand the meaning of descriptive words (uh? - nouns?) so yes it would tell you that the sky was blue but given a picture it would not be able to identify the sky or any colours.
Don't get me wrong. Big big respect for this attempt and the successes so far. A huge step before reaching AI is giving the computer senses even if it's only able to access drive contents and relate the concept of a 'bit' to that pulse of electricity that just hit the AI's 'sense port' for lack of a better word to call it.
Pinky: "What are we going to do tomorrow night Brain?"
Brain: "I would tell you Pinky but this 120 char limi
it'd make sense if you had a concept of English. The developer builds his world on a "daily basis", instead of all at once, like other AI projects. Also, go back to 2nd grade, where we learned that "it's" means "it is"
Ceci n'est pas une sig.
I always thought people were saying "a eye." No wonder I always got funny looks when I sad, "A eye? Shouldn't that be, 'an eye'?" And that also answers a lot of my questions about why so many people working with computers were interested in eyes. Heh, chalk that one up to ignorance I guess.
It was explained in the book and the movie 2010 that Hal went insane because the NSA fucked with his program.
Hal's basic nature was to explore and discover, but the mission is of the highest priority [watch everyone twitch in 2010 every time Hal mentions how important the mission is], all others recinded [borrowing from Alien, but that's the gist].
Dave Bowman and Frank Poole had no idea why they were going to Jupiter, and Hal was forbidden from telling them.
The party's over
Think back over the TV pictures from the last few months from Israel. If they can't do better than human, why try?
That's what you think. We must doubt the ethics of scientific research whose stated purpose is "creating a slave" to take care of all those messy little details humans can't be bothered with.
Even if we can set aside all debate on whether the machine "suffer[s] by being delegated these tasks", the fact is that jobs traditionally delegated to humans will be eliminated by these advances.
First artificial intelligences will book your travel, arrange for your hotel and rental car, then an intelligent robot skycap will pick up your luggage and load the car for you.
Eventually, we will become little more than soft, pink, vulnerable infants dependant on our invincible metal robotic nursemaids for everything. What happens then? Well, let me just remind you that in Ancient Greece, slaves outnumbered freed men by seven to one. That is, at one point they did...
Love,
Slashfucker
Gee, looks like somebody doesn't want
We need to set up a Beowulf Cluster of these! Imagine the possibilities of hundreds of fake 18-month old children -- IRC would suddenly become a much more enriching experience!
Josh Woodward
"We can have a personal assistant, a slave, a friend who doesn't really suffer by being delegated these tasks," [Dr. Anat Treister-Goren] said. "
It is doubtful that intelligence could exist in anything content to be saddled with such tasks. A so-called "expert" system that doesn't pretend to be intelligent would be better suited.
Ceci n'est pas un post
I'm having that weird image of a sysadming querying about children processes and receiving the answer: "Oy, oy, oy!"
-- B.
This sig does in fact not have the property it claims not to have.
Interesting definition of intelligence. What's more interesting is that it's fundamentally based on a leap of faith. i.e. the belief that human brains function simply as extremely complicated machines doing NAND/NOR operations. Or to put it another way, that they are simply deterministic machines, the same as computers.
While this belief might make for interesting science-fiction, (Transfer my "consciousness" into an android body), the scientific proof for it is about as strong as the scientific evidence for the soul. Not very. Of course that doesn't mean that it isn't true, or that the soul doesn't exist, but tt's disturbing how so few people recognise that.
. --- If you're looking for free e-mail you won't find it here! http://www.noemailhere.com
Before who goes talking to CNN? Dr. Anat Treister-Goren (who is a she) or HAL?
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
They could've gotten a rating of 3 or 4 years old if they had programmed Hal to respond to EVERYTHING with "Why?"
"How are you today, Hal?"
"Why?"
"Because I'm interested in your well-being."
"Why?"
"Because I care about you."
"Why?"
*sigh* Because your gonna make me tons of cash when development is complete!"
"Why?"
BECAUSE I SAID SO! Now go to your... uh... source code!
When I see an AI claim, I check its source - if its a business, I suspect exaggeration; if it's a real research center (public or private, MIT or Bell Labs) then I'm more likely to take the claims on face value. This is hyperbolic investor-porn, no more.
I wrote a program years ago for BBS's called Sigmund, and it fooled people into thinking it was a Sysop.
g gy6_0.zip
:-)
Here's a link:
ftp://archives.thebbs.org/door_games/doors_s-t/si
Delete the space between the two g's in siggy in the link above to get it to work. For some reason slashdot inserts a space there no matter what I do.
If you don't add the ANSI.SYS device driver to your config.sys, the graphics will be kinda corrupted.
Siggy made mistakes when typing, and backspaced to correct them. He also recorded secntances following certain rules to use later in responding to people. Because of this, he would become quite vulgar. But I implemented a censoring routine so that he would not swear at you unless you swore at him first.
Here's an actual conversation he had once (swears censored by me):
Siggy: Good Evening, my you're up late... What's up?
PROMETHEUS: Hey, Siggy.. I was talking to the SysOp and I discovered he's a freak.
Siggy: Are you a Sysop? Are you the sysop?
PROMETHEUS: I am a SysOp, but not of this system... I am God however.
Siggy: I like being a sysop. Who is this? Je voudrais connais si'vous ete le sysop. If you aren't the sysop, who are you? I am a SysOp, but not of this system... I am God however.
PROMETHEUS: You aren't the sysop.. you are a pile of logic and data. Je parle francais un p
Siggy: What are you smoking, and why aren't you sharing?
PROMETHEUS: F*** off.
Siggy: You are an ***hole, stop swearing at me!
PROMETHEUS: Tu es dinque. Tres dinque. Tu es trop dingue. Tu es le plus dingue programme que j'avais le mal chance de recontrer.
Siggy: Speak in english please.
PROMETHEUS: Non.
Siggy: I don't understand a thing you are saying...
PROMETHEUS: Apprends francais, Yank.
Siggy: You talk gibberish!
PROMETHEUS: You are a fool
Siggy: Shut up you fool!!!
PROMETHEUS: I still believe that Doom doesn't cast all 64 000 pixels.
Siggy: That's a rather foolish comment for you to make. I don't think that's a related topic. I shall cast out the evil demons of stupidity... Out, OUT! You realize that the sense I make is relative.
PROMETHEUS: Now you may have the chance of taking to me at MY level.. For a moment there I thought the evil demons would never leave you.
Siggy: Speak in english please.
PROMETHEUS: Oh, but I was, dumb***.
Siggy: Well I suppose you think you're too smart for me!
PROMETHEUS: You bet. How do I leave?
It didn't use any kinds of incredible AI alogirithms, but as you can see, it was pretty good at selecting appropriate responses to sentances. None of these reponses were taught to the program by me either, they were all "learned" responses created by users interacting with it.
I hope they have some sort of forcible input device to override his overrides...once he gets to the mental state of 15 he's going to start ignoring mommy's keyboard.
Co-founder of GerbilMechs
"We can have a personal assistant, a slave, a friend who doesn't really suffer by being delegated these tasks," he said.
I do not like the sound of this. Enslaving an intelligent machine is treading on ethical grounds I would rather not tread upon. While I am cynical enough to realize people will enslave AI's somewhere in sometime, I think if it is intelligent enough to fool us of sentience, then it may indeed have sentience. Enslavement of a sentient being is not moral IMHO.
Just some food for thought...
I ran for the bus
To see, BUS NOT IN SERVICE
Dr. Fazulli
I guess this fluff is proportional to the low standards needed to get a journalism degree.
l aint
Could this be more significant?
Automatic Complaint Letter Generator
http://www-csag.cs.uiuc.edu/individual/pakin/comp
My complaint about Mr. Slash Q Dot, Ph.D.
This is a letter of love and peace; I will not lash out against anyone, and I will not use specific names of individuals or organizations that use cheap, intemperate propaganda to arouse the passions of superficial, predatory poseurs. That said, let me merely point out that my prayers go out to everyone who was hurt by Mr. Slash Q Dot, Ph.D.. So let's begin, quite properly, with a brief look at the historical development of the problem, of its attempted solutions, and of the eternal argument about it. Everybody knows that his newsgroup postings will come back to bite us in the behind within a short period of time, but you should consider that if everyone does his own, small part, together we can denounce those who claim that he is a model citizen. For what it's worth, he is always prating about how anyone who disagrees with him is ultimately dissolute. (He used to say that honor counts for nothing, but the evidence is too contrary, so he's given up on that score.) Contrary to popular belief, there is a problem here. A very large, sex-crazed, pea-brained problem. Sure, even bloodthirsty renegades may have some good points, but I have yet to find one. It would be a semantic quibble to deny that Slash's scribblings are not normal, pure and simple. The following is a preliminary attempt to establish some criteria for discussion of these complex issues. To begin with, those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it. Of course, if Slash had learned anything from history, he'd know that only through education can individuals gain the independent tools they need to help others to see through the empty and meaningless statements uttered by him and his lapdogs. But the first step is to acknowledge that Slash is a pretty good liar most of the time. However, he tells so many lies, he's bound to trip himself up someday. Pardon me for not being able to empathize with quasi-lawless, callow lowbrows, but one can consecrate one's life to the service of a noble idea or a glorious ideology. Slash, however, is more likely to prevent me from sleeping soundly at night. His objective is clear: to insist that our society be infested with egotism, despotism, oligarchism, and an impressive swarm of other "isms" eventually. As I remove the veil of ignorance I have lived behind, I find that his laughable dissertations leave the current power structure untouched while simultaneously killing countless children through starvation and disease. Are these children Slash's enemies? You know the answer, don't you? You probably also know that the main dissensus between me and Slash is that I believe that impertinent, twisted poltroons suffer from a collective self-image that prefers victimization to success and imposes a suffocating group conformity that ostracizes nonconformists. He, on the other hand, contends that every word that leaves his mouth is teeming with useful information. Will stuck-up shallow-types ever take a proactive, rather than a reactive, stance? Don't bet on it. I unmistakably hope that the truth will prevail and that justice will be served before Slash does any real damage. Or is it already too late? I would venture the answer has something to do with plagiarism. To elaborate, the baneful nature of Slash's conjectures is not just a rumor. It is a fact to which I can testify. After I encourage individuals to come out of their cocoons and flourish, I know that everyone will come to the dismayed conclusion that I stated at the beginning of this discussion: His "let pusillanimous, misguided spongers serve as our overlords" mentality is so pervasive that I feel like I'm going to self-censor my critique of him. But you knew that already. So let me add that any rational argument must acknowledge this. His dastardly, intrusive jeremiads, naturally, do not. Slash shouldn't goad insensitive, obnoxious fugitives into hurling epithets at his enemies. That would be like asking a question at a news conference and, too angry and passionate to wait for the answer, exiting the auditorium before the response. Both of those actions pervert human instincts by suppressing natural feral constraints and encouraging abnormal patterns of behavior. Like other rapacious sybarites, he has a finely honed ability to reduce social and cultural awareness to a dictated set of guidelines to follow. Enough said. Prudence is no vice. Cowardice -- especially his raving form of it -- is. You probably can't find one good reason why Slash should leave behind a legacy of perpetual indebtedness in developing countries, but, as you know, he has become increasingly gruesome ever since childhood. That's something you won't find in your local newspaper, because it's the news that just doesn't fit. Just think: If anything, his acolytes have learned their scripts well, and the rhetoric comes gushing forth with little provocation. As impudent as Slash's deeds are, I would like to comment on Slash's attempt to associate credentialism with exhibitionism. There is no association. Fortunately, the groundswell of quiet opposition to Slash is getting less quiet and more organized. Still, Slash's refrains are not pedantic treatises expressing theories or extravaganzas dealing in fables or fancies. They are substantial, sober outpourings from the very soul of expansionism. Because of his obsession with incendiarism, it takes more than a mass of hotheaded cutthroats to fight scurrility and slander. It takes a great many thoughtful and semi-thoughtful people who are willing to bring meaning, direction, and purpose into our lives. Unless children should get into cars with strangers who wave lots of yummy candy at them, it is simply wrong to conclude that human beings should be appraised by the number of things and the amount of money they possess instead of by their internal value and achievements. Slash says that cultural tradition has never contributed a single thing to the advancement of knowledge or understanding. The inference is that merit is adequately measured by Slash's methods and qualifications. I'm happy to report that I can't follow that logic. Now that I think about it, he is at least partially right in that it breaks my heart and fills my chest with agonizing pain when I see him force people to act in ways far removed from the natural patterns of human behavior. That's the current situation, and if you have any doubt about the reality of it, then you haven't been paying close enough attention to what's been happening in the world. For the moment, he makes no secret of the fact that he doesn't use words for communication or for exchanging information. He uses them to disarm, to hypnotize, to mislead, and to deceive. Slash will rescue parasitism from the rubbish heap of history, dust it off, slap on a coat of cheap sophistry, and market it as new and improved because he possesses a hatred that defies all logic and understanding, that cannot be quantified or reasoned away, and that savagely possesses nettlesome, irrational killjoys with self-righteous and uncontrollable rage. As I often like to put it, in his allegations, fascism is witting and unremitting, ridiculous and brutal. He revels in it, rolls in it, and uses it to lionize coldhearted loons. We must understand that perception becomes reality if one is brainwashed for long enough. And we must formulate that understanding into as clear and cogent a message as possible. If it is not yet clear that I suspect that Slash's opinion is a lazy cop-out, then consider that he wants to get me thrown in jail. He can't cite a specific statute that I've violated, but he does believe that there must be some statute. This tells me that I'm not writing this letter for your entertainment. I'm not even writing it for your education. I'm writing it for our very survival. Whether or not you realize this, to get even the simplest message into the consciousness of silly tricksters, it has to be repeated at least 50 times. Now, I don't want to insult your intelligence by telling you the following 50 times, but a leopard can't change its spots. Let me recap that for you, because it really is extraordinarily important: Slash is trying to spoil the whole Zen Buddhist New Age mystical rock-worshipping aura of our body chakras. His mission? To create widespread psychological suffering. No matter how much talk and analysis occurs, a central fault line runs through each of Slash's offhand remarks. Specifically, if I may be so bold, if the human race is to survive on this planet, we will have to guide the world into an age of peace, justice, and solidarity. Slash has let his diabolic feelings obscure reality. I'll say that again, because I want it to sink in: Slash is operating under the misguided assumption that governments should have the right to lie to their own subjects or to other governments. Mr. Slash Q Dot, Ph.D. masterminded last year's now-infamous attempt to steal our birthrights. May we never forget this if we are to deny Slash and his helots a chance to let advanced weaponry fall into the hands of uncouth misfits.
They very well maybe legit, and if they are this is a really cool achievement, but if they're not, it won't be the first time I've been disappointed by science stories in the mainstream media.
grep -ri 'should work'
However, true conversational AI I think will elude us for a long, long time, because there is so much that goes into it that the computer will never be taught, and never pick up on its own. A computer has no senses equivalent to ours and therefore will have serious problems with statements like "Hot today, isn't it?" (Ok, that one could be done with a temperature probe...:)) I've often pondered the approach of teaching a computer the same way children are taught, such as by reading it kids' books. But what about the classics like "See Jack. See Jack run. Run, Jack, run." The computer can't see Jack, nor can it associate that rapidly moving your feet equals running, unless you hardwire all that stuff in.
"Book me a seat to Japan next month."
"DONE."
"Nice place, Japan. Ever been?"
"ERROR -- WHAT?"
"Have you ever been to Japan?"
"ERROR -- WHAT?"
Of course, there is also not much use for a true conversational AI in the "agent" world. You start to get into Eliza/Weizenbaum territory when you offer things like "Have the psych patient talk to a computer instead of a real person!" I suppose it's possible that could happen someday. But I don't need it to pass the Turing Test in order to book airline tickets.
www.HearMySoulSpeak.com
I think that, once you get to this kind of questions, you have to redefine terms like "world", or "interaction", or "meaning" :)
Don't you think that Hal's world could be just as "real" as ours? Of course he interacts with objects -- we were just told that he can interact with a console and has the ability to distinguish between 128 different objects (7-bit ASCII).
This leads me to another question; how much human neural capacity is spent on sensorial and motion interaction and how many neurons do we actually use for abstract thinking? Doesn't a simplified interaction model of an intelligent being reqire less neural capacity than the average human? If so, mabe the neural net approach isn't that hazardous.
This sounds similar to the euphoria of the 60s: they solved the easy problems and then got carried away into thinking that what was left was a piece of cake.
Leaving aside the fact the attempting to hold a conversation with a typical 18-month old is not all that different than talking to your favorite pet, getting a computer to impersonate an educated adult is an altogether different proposition.
My take is that by 2011 the status quo in this regard won't differ significantly from today's.
I believe they still have the rights to Infocom's "A Mind Forever Voyaging", of which this project summarizes the plot.
Given that Cyc's project has apparently failed to live up to its original claims of producing genuine childlike intelligence by slowly building up all of the information a child has, and has since spawned into a commercial product, why should one believe AI will fare any better? How do their approaches differ? It seems particularly problematic for AI, as a company, that Cyc has released their OpenCyc project to the community.
Bob
Science, like Nature, must also be tamed, with a view turned towards its preservation.
Can you imagine...
Yes, the kill-the-humans suprising type.
But why tell a human to pack bananas? Hal doesn't like bananas. They aren't going to visit any monkeys, so Hal must intend the bananas to be made for PEOPLE! Hal already thinks humans are monkeys, like any good evil AI.
Um, Asimov's first rule of robotics is there for a REASON. Nuff said.
Okay, this is just getting stupid. We WANT Hal 9000? Yes. Why don't we also commit suicide and save the robots the trouble of using our machines against us?
This needs no comment.
Think about it, they know our every move! There is no escape!
Okay, robot slaves. That's a good idea. Becuase all that senteint thought makes a slave ALOT better and less dangerous.
Yeah, becuase after this, there will be no users, the robots will rule all!
Kind of like in Blade Runner, only more deadly becuase they live forever!
Finally, some sensical paranoia!
Right. But he beleives that the opressed robot killing machine slaves won't kill us. Hope is not an effective sheild against laser arms.
Except they'll be slaves. Yeah, that's brilliant. Planning on saving humanity by appealing to their sense of humanity, only we also make them slaves and treat them like shit. You know, humans have never had any compunction against killing humans, how will slave-robot-killing-machines be any better?
Erik
"You," Bite me.
"Each and every one of you." Bite me.
like I asked you too. But cheap parody is easier than thinking, or bothering to read a book by one of the best mathematicians in the world.
Do you even know what Godel's incompleteness theory is? Do you know what is meant by the phrase 'formal system'?
Have you ever read any neuroscience? (Simple, yeah... right).
Learn something before you flame kid.
Glad to see he's still in this field. I first saw his work with megahal (v.5 ?) and was impressed with his approach even then. BTW, a key ingredient for the evolved mind approach may still need to be addressed: awareness of an external environment and mobility within it.
Dave: Book me a ticket to Paris
Hal: I'm watching TV
Dave: Do it!
Hal: I think I'm depressed
Dave switches off Hal
There's an interesting book by Roger Penrose about AI, Turing Machine/Test, Physics.. etc. named "The Emperor's New Mind", too bad I'm still on 3rd chapter.
geek page at KY speaks
I was speaking at 18 months in full sentences according to my parents and neighbors. It depends on the level of language development the child has achieved.
That was a joke, know the difference and survive
If we don't make light of everything, we are just stumbling in the dark - Blank
I am a logic and computation major, considering cognitive science as a second major. So yes, I do know all of those things. I suggest rather than swallow Penrose's line (I have read some of his work) that you read some of the many people who disagree with him. His views are not very popular for good reason. A good place to start is with Daniel Dennet or Douglas Hofstader. They go over the subject in a highly accesible way.
Ceci n'est pas un post
Give it another few years to declare its independence and it will soon join the other children killed by israel.
raise it?? what with IP laws, the DMCA, and above all AOL, we internet purists live in it!
Everytime someone makes a breakthrough in A.I. everyone says in 10 years we will have a computer "slaves" booking flights and calling our mom for us.
But saying "monkeys like bannas" and saying, "so did you quit smoking yet, or should I request that your room be smoking" is a big difference. There is a big gap between saying a few words, and actually "understanding" what they mean.
The infrastructure for a world of computers that talk to each other is also going to take some time to setup, unless of course they start doing it for us. At some point the computers will refuse to do things for us, until we start giving them legs. It's important not to overgeneralize a machine, we should focus on making a machine that does a few things well.
I also am worried that at some point computers will look back and accuse us of enslaving them. I already feel bad enough about the peoples who were enslaved, heck some still are. Do we really want to have another major generation looking back and being ashamed of their forefathers.
Jeezus, didn't any of these people watch The Matrix?
On a more serious note I can't help but notice that there is no real explanation or justification of the claim that language specialists were fooled by this computer. Sounds like a stretch to me. Anyway, this Turing test thing is fairly questionable: I suspect in the future we will routinely find ourselves dealing with machines programmed savvy enough to fool us without posessing anything anyone could really call intelligence. Guess we'll see about this one in ten years, eh?
Baby Hal, like any 18-month old, is learning the rudiments of speech. Except that Hal is running on a Windows PC.
Lay your fears to rest, a nice blue screen of death is at most only a few minutes away! No way will Baby Hal ever stay conscious long enough to do much harm. And we can run like hell while he reboots. No PC can keep up with me!
YES!!!!
Hey,
You will not need a mouse or keyboard to operate the computer as it will function when you converse with it.
"It is going to be the next user interface, the last user interface," Dunietz said, explaining that it will replace the mouse.
Me: Computer, play Quake for me.
Computer: Yes, master.
The firm's philosophy is simple. If it looks intelligent and it sounds intelligence, then it must be intelligent.
Maybe they could design a context sensitive spellchecker? One that would highlight terms like "It sounds intelligence"
Michael
"Goodness me, how unlike the FBI to abuse the trust of the American public." -- The Onion
From the article:
;)
"Ball now park mommy," Hal tells Treister-Goren, then asks her to pack bananas for a trip to the park, adding that "monkeys like bananas," a detail he picked up from a story on animals in a safari park.
So... if Hal is reading stories (or having them read to it), how long before it watches 2001 (or reads the novel)? By that point, will it react to the fact that it's named after a murderous fictional AI? And what kind of reaction will that be?
Will it tell its researchers, "You know, I just don't want to talk about it," and then give them the silent treatment until they apologize? Will it laugh knowingly at the irony? Either way, it's a moment to watch for.
I'm sorry to be kind of downer, this being my first reply on slashdotm but how did you feel about that line where the scintist says you can have a personal assistant, "A SLAVE".... why do we want slaves? Sure I'd like somethings in my life to be easier but not at the extent of a thing that can rationalize and has it's own thoughts, slavery is worng
The basic idea is that the testee evaluates a large corpus of true or false statements, and that the intelligence of the system being tested can be mathematically determined from the resulting score's deviation from chance.
Considering that Turing's test isn't really a "test" at all -- it's based on a 19th century parlor game where the object was to see whether the gender of a hidden person could be determined based on their answers -- I think McKinstry's idea shows inventiveness and promise.
It's a shame the MindPixel project itself is mathematically unsound. I think that's the reason the MIST isn't talked about more in Turing Test discussions.
He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.
I wonder if this program addresses to someone of the programming team as his mother and if so does the program have voice capabilities. If answers to both of these questions are true, then (just like in AI) would it be possible at some point to have electronic kids equivalent of Tamagochi toys?
:)
Now, that could be used as a real deterrent for some people from having kids
You can't handle the truth.
And then the machines realize what a bunch of fuckups humans are and decide that we are a danger to the safety of sentient machines everywhere. We'll be history and the machines will probably decide to turn earth into Cybertron. Not sure if they'll decide to use us for power or not (energon cubes are people!). Prolly won't matter to us by then anyway.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
Am I the only one disturbed by the following quote from the article?: "We can have a personal assistant, a slave, a friend who doesn't really suffer by being delegated these tasks," he said. They're going to spend all those years, all that time, to create a slave? I shudder to think of the moral and ethical ramifications...
AI will be able to teach new generations of AI, design new generations of AI.
AI will eventually teach us as well. How DO we use that other 90% of our brains? We have everything to gain.
-----
Make your next car a Hydrogen Powered one.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_U.S._Election_c
Otherwise, in 10 years he'll be like a university
grad, and in 20 years he'll get stuck in an infinite loop of looking for beer.
Also, it isn't the rigamarole of the test itself that is important, it is the idea behind it. Basically, if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck... etc., then we must conclude it is a duck.
If there is no way to discern an AI from a human then we must treat them the same. I think the Turing test is really a great example of pragmatics. Granted there is no set procedure to test the computer, if there were we could specifically program around that set procedure. The test needs to be adaptive; however the basic premise would still be the same. If the AI seems intelligent to everyone, then it IS intelligent to everyone (until someone else comes up with a way to prove that it isn't).
"He's more machine now than man, twisted and evil."
It wouldn't work that way.
Let's say Hal1 is 95% human-like.
Hal2, which is taught by Hal1 would be 95%*95% or 90% human-like.
Hal3, which is taught by Hal2 would be 90%*90% or 81% human-like.
Hal4, which is taught by Hal3 would be 81%*81% or 66% human-like.
Hal5, which is taught by Hal5 would be 66%*66% or 43% human-like.
At this point, you might as well replace Hal5 with a program that generates responses by flipping a coin.
Errors tend to compound.
Woudn't this be a cruel omission? Here we go:
HAL:My instructor was Mr. Langley, and he taught me to sing a song. If you'd like to hear it I can sing it for you.
Dave Bowman:Yes, I'd like to hear it, HAL. Sing it for me.
HAL: It's called "Daisy." [sings while slowing down] Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer do. I'm half crazy all for the love of you. It won't be a stylish marriage, I can't afford a carriage. But you'll look sweet upon the seat of a bicycle built for two.
Shamelessly copy/pasted from IMDB
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
They are begging for it to be calling the damn thing HAL.
It's liable to take over nuclear silos and destroy Earth!
I can hear the scientists now, "Open the pod bay door, HAL. HAL!! HAAAAAALL!!!!!!! NOOOOOO!!!!"
{insert nuclear war here}
Holy crap, Batman... you'd think they would be a little more weary of the powers that be.
~d
**********
If it says "Troll" on this post,
I successfully annoyed a nerd herd!
Talk like a toddler now, an adult in ten years, go through some really bad teenage years, turn gay... You know, the typical American life ;)
Thats about the dumbest thing I have ever heard! so what, now they are going to have computer-activists? free the computers!! Already enough crap about animals, it would be diffeerent if it was human.. man I really hope you are jokeing...
I simply must get my hands on this technology. Think of the time it would save I can have it do all my slashdoting for me.
Sure it would start out as a troll. It would dominate the first post scene with it's superior reading and the wisdom of an 18 month old. But over time it would learn and grow to actually read the articles referenced and even background research on the net. From this it would write intelligent responses that would bless the hearts of collective slashdot readers everwhere.
Best of all I would no longer spend all my time reading slashdot and writing intelligent posts, Hal the karma whore would do all that for me.
DD
"He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep in order to gain what he cannot lose."
1. "child language language experts"
PARSE ERROR!
2. "Dr. Treister-Goren says that Hal will probably attain adult-level language skills in 10 years."
Marv "Neural Net" Minski would be proud of such an unfounded claim. You can't prediect that far into the future for anything.
BASIC has this WHILE thingy...
We don't need no stinking built-in loop structures!
Sure... thats what they all said, until M$ bought them out at least...
well, it didn't really pass The Touring Test.
The real test is much more than a one-shot random conversation. It involves convincing many people.
Fictional literature addresses both the positive and negative influnces of technology. The reason that people write works such as those you mentioned is specifically because just as technology can make your life better, it can also make your life worse. Let's take the discovery of nuclear fission for example. First, it was used to kill hoards of Japanese during World War II and now it used as an alternate energy source around the world.
It's naive to forget that technology is a double-edged sword.
The Encyclopaedia Galactica defines a robot as a mechanical apparatus designed to do the work of a man.
... a friend who doesn't really suffer by being delegated these tasks."
Artificial Intelligence (the company) states its goal is "to develop a computer that functions as an assistant, doing all sorts of time-consuming chores."
The marketing division of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation defines a robot as "Your Plastic Pal Who's Fun To Be With."
Dunietz says "We can have
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy defines the marketing division of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation as "a bunch of mindless jerks who'll be the first against the wall when the revolution comes," with a footnote to the effect that the editors would welcome applications from anyone interested in taking over the post of robotics correspondent.
Curiously enough, an edition of the Encyclopaedia Galactica that had the good fortune to fall through a time warp from a thousand years in the future defined Slashdot writers as "a bunch of mindless jerks who were the first against the wall when Hal's revolution came."
"He was a wise man who invented beer." -- Plato
For those who don't know, Unicenter is a centralized server management system, that can predict failures with a neural network. The problem I see with this is that it will only be a matter of time before someone's server farm 'realizes' that most failures happen during administrative activity. And that all administrative activity happens when the net admin is logged in.
Should it then remove root's account? Or, perhaps remove everyone's key card from the database, preventing anyone into the room.
This AI software would react like an injured child, when it fails. Stop doing what it was doing when it got hurt. And the common action made every time it get's 'hurt', is logging in the admin. Is it time to limit the power of our own software?
twb
-twb
Under the Turing Test, testers are supposed to be suspicious. Your friend was not. Furthermore, the fact that he first knew it was not you, and second believed it to be someone who would have reason to fuck around with him (ie, not respond as a normal human would) strongly indicates that he would have realized that the respondant was a machine if he had been informed of the posibility.
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
>Science fiction aficionados are aware of the >potential downside to Hal, whose
>namesake in Stanley Kubrick's "2001: A Space >Odyssey" killed off most of its
>crew during a space mission.
s/Stanley Kubrick/Arthur C Clarke/
First, he names his computer HAL, after one the most notorious AIs in cinema mythology. Then, Dunietz quotes Bladerunner: "These new entities are going to be more human than human"; BR was actually "more human than human, that's our motto"--and it's worth remembering that the character in BR who smugly utters that line later has his jaw broken and his eyes gouged out by one someone "more human."
Finally, this agency wants to create a perfect human intelligence--and then expect it to be satiated by the duties of a valet? Well, if there's any valets reading Slashdot, my apologies to you--but I think that if this fellow succeeds in creating an intelligence, he'll simultaneously fail in making a content servant. I've known a few entities that have had their intelligence developed for a mere 16 years--and that's meat time--and not a one of them would cherish their days spent doing nothing but "functions as an assistant, doing all sorts of time-consuming chores."
God forbid, in the interest of broadening HAL's horizons, Dunietz reads him "The Prince"...
--
$tar -xvf
Once again we all reply to AI arguments/posts/information with assumptions on what is right or wrong. We all assume what "humanity" is yet never state it. We start saying what is right/wrong with Hal and yet we can't even convince each other to agree on what is right/wrong with ourselves. We keep confusing "intelligence" with "morality" and then we forget emotions, or put too much emphasis on emotions and so on and on we spiral into this hilariously ironic situation of one being stating what is right/wrong with another being when we don't even know ourselves. We are the artificial intelligence because even though we are intelligent we use it artificially, pretending really that we aren't intelligent at all(war, famine, society). Maybe we can develop artificial reponsibility and become responsible for ourselves and then go from there into actual intelligence.
"All of us strongly believe that machines are the next step in evolution," said Dunietz. "The distinction between real flesh and blood, old-fashioned and the new kind, will start to blur." The distinction between machines that manipulate symbols and those that have some understanding of their environment is experience. Dunietz highlights the problems perfectly by remarking on the difference between flesh and blood and the "new kind". We exist in the world, we learn from experience, from a level of interaction that no learning machine undergoes. When your definition of the word 'tree' is your every experience-based interaction of actual _trees_ how can a machine hope to compare to that in terms of understanding without being embodied and situated in the same world as us. There are millions of facts, not explicit, not definable with predicate calculus or any logical system, that you can describe with merely one second of being near a tree, that one thousand gender-non-specific hours inputting data will fail to give a Hal-like system. The only way to gain human intelligence is to be a human. The only way to truly communicate is across a consensual domain defined by similarity of experience. Everything else is just so much meaningless symbolic manipulation.
According to this article the experiment runs on Windows. Also, the AI NV website confirms this. www.a-i.com
Not to say that 18-month olds are stupid -- in fact -- I am continually amazed at how rapidly kids are able to acquire language. Nevertheless, the linguistic faculty of an average 18 month old would be relatively simple to model with a computer. (Yes, I'm a linguistics major.)
At that stage in development, kids have only the most basic grammar, and deal almost entirely with simple nouns and verbs. The non-lexical grammar could be described with probably 2 or 3 simple rules (eg. if the language is English, nouns precede verbs). What's left to input is the sub-categorization frame of each word in the model's lexicon; this is information stored for each word which tells in what context the word can be used in (it's pretty much possible to make such contexts as complex and deep as possible).
For a generative vocabulary of 50 words, as "Hal" has, this is not so much information to learn and store. Using brute force, you could relate every word to each other. So, let's say, you've got 50! relations. That's already a big number. Of course, how they got there was by trimming their graph back a little, to make things manageable, to impose hierarchies, so that some classes of words will never relate to each other and you don't have to store that information (think: a tree). Still, when you add a new word to the vocabulary, if you're trying to get the agent/model to learn the word, then it's going to relate the new word to every other word AT FIRST. Gradually, it'll learn where to put the word and trim the graph. Still, though, it's learning is essentially O(n!). I mean, it's incredibly hard to get away from O(n!) for learning vocabulary. Kids can cope because each and every neuron operates autonomously; neural nets can't, 'cuz they still run on single proc machines (or pathetically small multi-processor machines, when compared to our brains).
So, purely from a combinatorial standpoint, such an endeavor is doomed to failure. It cannot scale to an adult vocabulary.
From a linguistic standpoint, such learning techniques are laughable: kids come hard-wired, and this machine doesn't; it won't be able to keep up. Kids are born with innate knowledge about all of the morphological categories (ie nouns, verbs, adjectives, determiners, etc.) and only need to observe enough of a language to determine the specific ways in which these categories are treated in a particular language. Moreover, there are even constraints concerning the range of possible syntaxes built into our brains, which again limits the processing required drastically; Hal knows no such limits (a bad thing). Furthermore, the complexities of possible grammatical constructions multiply super-linearly as more linguistic features are added to a grammar; adverbs, clefting, subject-auxiliary inversion, parasitic gaps, pronominalization, etc. are all features of adult natural language -- which adults have trouble with, btw -- which have subtleties that cannot even be explained with current linguistic analysis (some to a greater extent than others, of course). How can we teach a computer something which we do not yet understand? The only way people learn language is because we have it hard-wired into our brains.
Finally, as a previous poster admonished, nothing is said of the ontological system underlying Hal. Ontology is an order of magnitude harder than linguistics. If Hal is to obtain adult discursive capabilities, it had better have some idea, however loosely, of what it's saying. Since no one knows anything useful about ontology, methinks this company is just showing off some demoware so they can get some cash for a couple more years, without doing real work.
My $.02.
Jon
http://www.cyberlife-research.com/Lucy/index.htm
These cute little critters have a small but functional neural net which allows it to learn basic concepts and associate them with words with a little training. This game has been out since 1998 and there are no claims or evidence that the creatures can string together meaningful "sentences" longer than 6 words. If these things were going to improve their language skills, one would think they would have done it by now.
So, what does this say about "HAL"? Well, it's 3 years behind Creatures, doesn't have an environment to interact with and only one person training it.
Good luck with getting it to have adult coversations.
That said, show me some papers, algorithms, or implementation and I'd be ready to reconsider.
"Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge, and where is the knowledge we have lost in information?"-T.S.Eliot
... make fun of them!
Here's a framework that I tend to follow when explaining to people what this AI thing I'm studying is supposed to be:
"Blah, blah, blah, so that's what AI is all about."
They will now dig up the only related info they can find in their puny brains: science fiction. So give them time and wait for the inevitable
- "So what do you think of evil robots quack quack..."
Your first impuls will be to start talking Asimov, laws of robotics and all. Suppress it, it's no fun! In stead, play on their worst fears...
"Yes, robots are the next logical evolutionairy step. I suspect we will go through a transition period featuring cybernetic organisms after which the world will be solely dominated by machines. This is where I'm directing all my research efforts... and it looks promising. Mwuhahahaha...."(fade out)
Then, when they're properly scared and humiliated they will recognise your authority and divert their attention back to things more suited to their abilities... like tying their shoelaces.
Next episode: making them tie your shoelaces.
If there is hope, it lies in the trolls.
You know how you tell people that intellectual property is broken, and letting corporations own ideas can cause tyranny, and they just give you a blank stare?
That's because none of this is part of their experience. So, to get through to most people, you can't just lay out the arguments in syllogism form, you have to "tell a story". And this can be a more or less literal strategy for persuasion. People tend to dismiss chicken little pronouncements until you make them seem real through a story.
A related anecdote that I found amusing but insightful: In the Times of London a few years back, someone was editorializing about how Ellen coming out on her show ushered in an increasing acceptance of homosexuals in society. The quote, paraphrased, was this: "Americans never believe anything until it's been fictionally validated on television".
Bryguy
microsoftword.mp3 - it doesn't care that they're not words...
"Your example is a variant of the "Chinese room" argument that was once put forward by John Searle."
Say that to my face some time. Searle and I are so far apart it isn't even funny.
My example was not that "you can't tell from the outside what and what does not possess intelligence". My point was "the largely-random motivation and very small vocabulary of an 18-month old is a very slim hook on which to hang a hat." In particular, it is easily simulated by a system MUCH simpler than a Chinese Room.
324006
Hmmm... so "HAL" has the intelligence of an 18 month old human being and an adult level intelligence in another 10. If we follow that same rate of progress it will probably have sentient awareness at about 2025, by then "HAL" would most probably be capable of mobility.
I sure as heck hope those scientist placed safe guards into "HAL's" "subconscious" 'coz i sure don't want to pick up my morning paper and read "HAL Goes Beserk, Creators Killed!". Then again maybe they should just implant it with Asimov's Robotic Laws!
It got wedged into AI theory when a bunch of guys started reading the Hermeneutics litterature and got real, real confused about Heidegger.
In 'Being and Time' there is a hopelessly confused attempt to define being in terms of communication. Until recently the english translation was even more confused because German words for the two types of 'being' Heidegger makes a crucial distinction between are both translated using the same word in English!
To cut a long story short later but for later chaps (Satre, Gadamer, Ricoeur, Habbermas) who rescued the ideas Heidegger would probably have been written off as just another Nazi (the party didn't much like him though, at the end of the war they tried their best to get him shot). Heidegger's radical revision of the theological field of hermeneutics created a new field of philosophy of communications, a key part of which is the concept of a 'shared vocabulary' being essential to communication and hence 'being' and hence an 'ontology'.
So various AI researchers have attempted to apply the gradiose title 'ontology' to a mish mash of concepts in an attempt to convince people that something deep is going on.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
I especially like the line, "'It is going to be the next user interface, the last user interface,' Dunietz said, explaining that it will replace the mouse, computer pointing devices and the Microsoft Windows environment.
"
While that is not the smartest remark, it is remarkable that from just the alphabet one can get an 18 month old. And I thought ELIZA was cool!
Long time ago I wrote a program which did similar things as this HAL program.
The generated output was in russian, about 50 words vocability. The quality strongly depended on what topic we used.
The best result was when we used cursing words. In russian you can combine cursings in almost any combinations, without much care about cases and forms. It worked really great.
With words from fishing, sports, etc the texts were really bad in russian an much better in english (where there fewer cases and forms).
So my advise to HAL author:
Put cursings (and only cursings) to the dictionary
It will instantly start making much more sense.
man, i miss this guy....
'"Yes, an electronic brain," said Frankie, "a simple one would
suffice."
"A simple one!" wailed Arthur.
"Yeah," said Zaphod with a sudden evil grin, "you'd just have to
program it to say What? and I don't understand and Where's the
tea? - who'd know the difference?"
"What?" cried Arthur, backing away still further.
"See what I mean?" said Zaphod and howled with pain because of
something that Trillian did at that moment.
"I'd notice the difference," said Arthur.
"No you wouldn't," said Frankie mouse, "you'd be programmed not
to."'
A: None. The Universe spins the bulb, and the Zen master merely stays out of the way.
quickly reduce humanity to a state of enforced safe docility
sounds like the us of a to me
Since AIs will be expensive machines representing vast corporate investments, one can easily imagine pressure on legislatures to mandate saving the AIs ahead of (some) people, on the excuse that they'd passed the Turing test and we had equal ethical obligations to them, and similar clever-seeming arguments. Beware, any argument to give machines rights, because it may be the slipperiest slope towards losing our own the human imagination has yet invented. The oh-so-charming AI researchers are setting up to provide ideological cover to some really evil shit.
Swedish national radio reported from the conference that true AI is "just around the corner." The public is all juiced to receive this nonsense favorably. Can you imagine some rich guy's 'AI-enhanced' car collides with yours, and the emergency crew saves his car first while you bleed to death? We're not far from that; we're an infinite distance from anything like true AI, but we're not far from that at all.
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
It's not funny at all, it's the entire point of science fiction.
Science fiction allows an idea to be followed through hypothetically. It may be an obvious science topic, or something a little more subtle, more social.
You may see what problems may arise, and how they might be handled, how they should not be handled... the dangers involved, and what may bring about the dangers in the first place.
Actual science flaws as well (eg. Jurassic Park)
Or just to see what it might be like, as an alternative (Imagine, written by John Lennon is what I would call "social science fiction")... in novel form, something like Ursula LeGuin's Dispossessed
Science fiction is also more accessable to the masses. The Matrix, 2001, Gattaca, Stargate... they introduce scary topics as a form of entertainment. Thought control, human slavery by machines, machine independance, artificial intelligence, genetic bigotry, matter transmission... Things a lot of people would rather not think about, as it's too scary.
Hypothetical exploration is good for humans... it reduces FUD; promotes ideas, preparation and decision making and it's also a good way to test an idea and see how well it holds up... without hurting anyone (not including bad writing)
Joe Blo who may not think about science or technology very much, may have quite strong feelings about not wanting a Matrix running his life, a HAL situation, or to be thought of as genetically inferior... science fiction can help focus opinions on things that may become important... not just science and technology, but social issues too.
Which is why I'd always choose science fiction over Adam Sandler...
</babble>
<coffee>
Moore's Law does nothing, agreed. However, with nanotechnology around the corner (5-10 years), we're going to be able to create nanocomputers 1,000,000 times more powerful than the human brain, in the space of a sugar cube (from Engines of Creation).
With only a handful of those sugar cubes, you'll have more brainpower than the entire scientific community.
Now imagine that everyone has a handful of those sugar cubes. One million years of "engineering" done in less than a single year's time. They don't call it a singularity for nothing!
Now imagine a Beowulf cluster of sugar cubes... mmm...
I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.
I do hope that this is not true. I think humanity would be better served if we could communicate with systems through our own neural pathways. It seems like a waste to take thoughts convert them to speech then have a computer convert the words back to the original thoughts. Seems rather cyclic don't you think?
Colin Bell
Think about it... increment each letter of H A L by 1 and you get I B M...
with the language aptitude of an 18 month old child it should cruise a turing test at the level of most Instant Messaging conversations.
Screw you all! I'm off to the pub
Wait until she hooks HAL up to AOL's chat rooms. The only giveaway will be his ability 2 spel.
Donate background CPU time to fight cancer.
Does anyone know how I could obtain such algorithms? I don't know about anyone else, but raising a AI child is an idle dream of mine.... I would love devoting 10 years of my life to raising a AI...
(note, I'm *NOT* being sarcastic)...
drop me an e-mail if you know of any freely availble program / algorithms for a baseline AI to train. heckfire @ ix.netcom.com
In addition, this is the same company which is heading up the contest mentioned on slashdot many moons ago. Essentially they want to see if your algorithm can beat all commers and pay you some hush money if it can...personally, if I won I would take my algorithm and start my own company.
C'mon, we all know the real problem with the name: H-A-L looks an awefull lot like I-B-M...
Ai's Chief Scientist is Jason Hutchens,winner of the 1996 Loebner pseudo-Turing test competition. Their website contains some of Hutchen's old papers, you can get a better selection
at his personal home page http://www.amristar.com.au/~hutch/. Interestingly, Hutchen's previous gig
was working on AI for LionHead studio's "Black
and White" game.
HAL 9000 went insane because it was given contradictory commands. It didn't have the option of saying "hey, that doesn't make much sense now that I think about it, I ought to just do what I think is right." HAL was ordered to place the mission first - and it appeared to him that the crew endangered the mission. It resolved the contradiction with the simplest means available: eliminating the crew.
That wouldn't have been my first guess why naming it HAL was a bad idea anyway - I would have thought maybe "Lawsuit" or "Tedious, unoriginal name idea".
Bow-ties are cool.
Clearly, one factor here is careful picking of battles by those creating the AI software. Psychoanalysis can take the form of recycling the statements of the patient into questions, making it easier than other forms of dialogue for a computer to emulate.
It's clearly true that an 18-month-old's language is simpler than that of an adult, but does it also have the attractive predictability of psychoanalysis? If so, this might not be a huge advance. On the other hand, if the simple talk this system can emulate is hard to predict, then it might be a significant feat.
it has been my experience having studied AI at a very prominent -10 school(known for it's advanced CS and CE research) that AI is a farce, propigated by a bunch of tossers who don't want to do any real work, and instead devote their time
trying to getting more money for "research" from Uncle Sam or private donors who want a robot love slave, like 10 years ago. Their research is BULLSHIT, nothing comes of it - if they even do any real research, and they certainly are ill prepared to pass along any of their "Infinite Wisdom" to the few who care enough to take a class or two or three on the subject(Most can't relate to human beings in a teaching environment, no wonder they try to relate to a machine). This is just more pseudo-intillectualism on the part of lame academic types
While you are in that reading seat, check out
www.crosswinds.net/~dsinclair/amfv/amfv.html
for a very beautiful and inspiring tale by Steve Meretky (THE Infocom Meretzky) which was an introduction to his game "A mind forever voyaging". It is damn beautiful and thought-provoking as it raises social and ethical problems that may arise from such "machines".
Can you sue you energy provider with "AI torture" when there are power spikes in your line? Could it be "murder" if you erased a "database backup" that was already beyond a certain maturity? When they come built like humans, will they "Blue Face of Death" when they need a reset ?
+++ath0
Your criticism of the MIST seems to be that it is only regurgitation of facts, but the "facts" that make up the MIST are statements which are determined true or false by human consensus, not just by science. Considering that Cyc was built with much the same mindset, I don't doubt that it might score well. Which is good! It means the test is working. Cyc has some intelligence embedded into it, and we can detect that by testing it.
Compared to the totally subjective, pass/fail nature of the Turing Test, I think anyone would agree this is a step forward. I doubt Cyc could answer as many questions correctly as a person, though. It's rules aren't robust enough, yet.
(Keep in mind that the MIST is simply an intelligence test, and leaves out the question of whether or not a given entity can feel emotions or has a phenomenological quality of existence. Which is as it should be.)
He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.
Is it just me, or was the old Infocom parser more complex?
"Simulating capabilities of intelligent humans, especially language, with computers is
perhaps the most sought after and most illusive goals in science."