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."

Comments

This isn't the first time...

[FudgePackinJesus]

that the idea of teaching a "child" system has been used for AI research.

Cog anybody?

Re:Uhh... Turing had a computer??

[ichimunki]

In addition to the other fine points made in response here, I would point out that computing machines have been around for quite some time, the Babbage Difference Engine and Babbage Analytical Engine are from the 1820s-30s. Ada Lovelace wrote the first program in the 1840's. Hollerith's tabulating machine was first used on a large scale for the 1890 census. The Differential Analyzer was in the 1930's, and it used vacuum tubes and punched paper tape to solve differential equations.

Re:MegaHAL

[Protohiro]

Interestingly enough, from Jason Hutchens' website:

I'm currently the Chief Scientist here at Ai. Working here is like being a character in a Neal Stephenson novel. We're making child machines which can learn language in the same way as human infants do. We're based in a huge mansion in Israel. We watch movies in the atomic bomb shelter. We jack in to the network using wireless technology. It's cool, man.

So, in fact, the creator of MegaHal is in fact the brains behind this outfit!