Posted by
michael
on from the dreaming-the-future dept.
Anonymous Coward writes: "Ray Kurzweil and other digerati discuss when popular sci-fi concepts will manifest in the real world. See part I or
part II."
"Futurists"
by
SeanAhern
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
It has been said that so-called "futurists" oversell the short term, and undersell the long term.
Machine translation? You gotta be kidding!
by
epsalon
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
Machine translation in 0-30 years?! As a person involved in these topics, I can say that 30 years ago people thought this could be solved in 30 years. We are today almost as far away as we were 30 years ago, and I think that there's no way of this being a realitiy in less than 100 years.
To do correct machine translation you have to fully model the world and knowledge. Translation (for humans) is a tedious job, requiring a lot of research and artistic-like choice of words.
I think that we will sooner have machines writing their own novles than full machine transtaltion. The problem is just too hard.
The problem with the Turing test
by
evilviper
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
The biggest problem with the Turing test is that it is completely subjective. The smarter of a person you are, the smarter the computer will have to be to give an accurate response. Obviously that trait is not one that reflects intelligence.
Get someone dumb enough and they'll chat with ELIZA for hours at a time.
Re:The problem with the Turing test
by
nyjx
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
I wouldn't be so sure of your "definition" - many would argue that the is no such thing as intelligence there is only perceived intelligence. Examples:
Intelligence can depend on the environment: Is a spider intelligent? Spining a web it's amazing, stick the thing in a bath tub and it doesn't look so smart.
Intelligence can be social: is an ant intelligent? Not by itself but ant colonies perform some pretty amazing feats.
Intelligence may depend on other knowledge: A chess grandmaster may play a very strange move near the beginning of the game which looses him the game. Why? He took a calculated risk and it didn't pay off. Was he dumb? No, you say. What if it wasn't a chess grandmaster but Joe Blogss from down the street - yeah THAT was a dumb move...
Perception of intelligence is about being seen to to the right thing at the right time.
Regarding the second point - this gets to the heart of the Chinese Room Argument: can intelligence (I would distinguish "sentience") be "built" or "must" there be something more. Was deep blue intelligent? Searle would argue "no". Some would argue "Yes, In the chess domain". There was nobody on the planet it couldn't teach somethign about chess and (to an extent) explain those choices. Many AI researchers weren't happy about deep blue because it basically used very fast search and no fancy reasoning. But hey - that just shows that there's more than one way to solve a problem IMHO...
-- .sig
catch the difference?
by
joenobody
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
The difference in replies: the CTO says some things have a chance of happening and gives a shot at when.
The geek says it will all happen, it's just a matter of time.
--
credibility/timeframe vs needed application
by
WannaBeGeekGirl
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
This is an intriguing article because not only are they rating the credibility of recent SF ideas, but they're trying to attach a timeframe to the ideas based on what we have today.
Whats even more interesting from my point of view is to ask the question: If you consider the actual applications, perhaps even getting very specific, do the ratings and timeframes still match up. Obviously rating credibility is subjective somewhat, anyway. And similarly, trying to attach a time frame to technology is still at best an educated guess.
But if looked at from the point of view that a specific application of one of the SF technologies would have significant beneficial impact on quality of life for a lot of people, then perhaps the time frames change out of necessity. What if we figure out that by uploading a short program into the brain we could signal synapses, neurons and such to keep seratonin levels at a therapeutic level for people suffering from depression and give them a much better quality of life. Thats just a rough example I throw out, but I bet there are some serious applications seen in technologies of the future that will actually boost the timeframe through basic need.
Anyone else think so? Comments?
Just my $.02
WBGG
-- ~WBGG~
"And I'm so sad like a good book I can't put this Day Back a sorta fairytale with you" ~Tori Amos
William Gibson
by
layingMantis
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
.........Neuromancer was the uncanniest thing i've read. He coined 'cyberspace' in 1984 (or was it '86?) he invented (or at least, popularized the idea in sci-fi), the "matrix" WAY before Keanu Cheese starred in that overrated film, and his characters were ultra cool examples of the "wired" human with organic-machine interfaces (that razor-girl was cool). Even the narrative style, with the dense but ambiguous portayals of the gritty subcultures of vast metropolises seems futuristic.
The guy was a prophet. Who knows what strange visions from his novels have yet to materialize?
Re:William Gibson
by
LoveMe2Times
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
This is offtopic, but what the hey. I just recently read Neuromancer on the recommendation of almost every geeky friend that I have, and I was stunned. I was stunned that a book that won so many awards and is beloved by so many people turned out to be one of the worst sci-fi books that I've ever read. For point of reference, I've probably read ~100-150 sci-fi books, lifetime, and my faves are pretty standard (but not recent): Dune series, various Heinlein, Clark, Bradbury, and Assimov. In Neuromancer, I found the characterizations, character development, plot, pacing, development, voice, and dialog to be very poor. The narrative was acceptable more than it wasn't, but I don't think that's really a complement. I did actually finish the book as I assumed that that something interesting *had* to happen eventually. I can accept that when it was published, just the idea of a noir near-future was interesting, but to me as a modern reader it just comes off like an admirable first attempt by a capable high school student.
Now, I'm guessing that a fair number of/. readers liked the book and may try and defend it, so before you do, keep a couple things in mind. 1) I'm attacking the book's literary merit (or lack thereof). 2) I'm stating that a book lacking in literary merit and lacking ideas that are new to me (*regardless of whether or not they were new to somebody else at some other time!*) ranks very low on my "quality metric for sci-fi books."
Now, if you feel compelled to argue that Neuromancer does, in fact, have literary merit, then please be prepared to answer a few things: 1) Describe the character backgrounds (ie, information about the characters that occured prior to the events of the work) for Case, Molly, Armitage, and Riveria, in detail. 2) Explain how this correlates to each character's motives for furthering the plot. 3) Explain how the protaganist has grown over the course of the book. 4) Quote us one section of dialog that you found to be particularly well done. I assert that the answer to #1 will comprise about a paragraph, which for four major characters is ridiculous. This, in turn, relates to why #2 is easy to answer, and very, very shallow. I think the answer to #3 is to mumble, "Well, there must be *something*," while flipping through the book. For #4, you may find something. I'm curious as to what it is. I'll probably disagree with you, but then we can agree to disagree, I hope! I also hope that I've managed to substantiate and clarify my position sufficiently to avoid being modded a troll, as this isn't intended as such. If you like the book despite these shortcomings, well, to each his or her own:)
Kurzweil seems to believe everything
by
Florian+Weimer
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
I think he gives all scenarios a credibility rating of 10/10, even the Independence Day scenario. This guy must live in a different world. However, I've bought his predictions book, and I plan to read in twenty years time or so. It will certainly be funny.
It's not at all obvious -- to me at least -- that we should want AIs to feel emotions. Who
wants a warehouse full of smart bombs with hurt feelings?
I do not believe that we would want a warehouse full of smart bombs with hurt feelings any more than we would want people with hurt feelings being responsible for the deployment of such bombs. The military screens for such things through various personality and performance based tests.
However, I do believe that emotions are important to AI for one simple fact. For true AI to work, the computer must want to do something, not just react as programmed. I came upon this when I first played with an ELIZA program. I mean it could "learn" an "appropriate" response by asking what it should say if it had no prior knowledge of a topic, but the program never wanted to learn, it had no motivation. In fact, if it asked for a response, it would simply sit there waiting indefinately, whereas any living thing above a plant would go about doing something else.
Now, putting human emotions into a computer might not be the best of things, but what definetly needs to happen is some kind of feedback loop to positively and negatively reinforce the machine so that it has some kind of "desire" to change its behavior. Then, we will have true AI, and not before.
Using the brain to store digital information:
The problem is less one of interface than it is one of reprogramming neurons. While this might technically be possible, is there going to be any sort of information density advantage? Human memory has some really nice lossy compression, but that would make it a bad way to store digital data.
Computers "understanding" and "speaking" human language:
I think the only thing we've really learned in the last 30 years is that the problem is a lot harder than we thought it was 30 years ago. There are a multitude of problems, from simple parsing to having a large enough database to understand context. That, and we really don't know what problem we are solving. A speech interface to a database would seem to be to be a useful tool - "what is the weather going to be like today?" opens up the appropriate web page. "Find me a good price on a 1997 Honda Accord" hits the search engines, finds a few dealers in my area, and gets me some pages to view. We don't even have anything this sophisticated without the voice interface. (Speech-to-text + text-to-speech + Google) is not tons better than Google. Yet, we expect a program with the depth of knowledge and subtlety of reasoning that a human posesses. My own version of the Turing Test, "I'll believe it when I see it," suggests to me the system that can pass the Turing Test is a LONG way off.
Software as a weapon:
OK, ID was a poor example - I know I'm 1337 enough to reverse engineer alien technology in a matter of minutes and write a virus using a Mac, but that guy? But really, software as an weapon is only useful against those who use software, and only when that software is of critical importance. Even North Americans aren't THAT reliant on the 'net, although it might be wise to take precautions before we wire all of our brains together...
Slashdot Mirror
It has been said that so-called "futurists" oversell the short term, and undersell the long term.
Machine translation in 0-30 years?! As a person involved in these topics, I can say that 30 years ago people thought this could be solved in 30 years. We are today almost as far away as we were 30 years ago, and I think that there's no way of this being a realitiy in less than 100 years.
To do correct machine translation you have to fully model the world and knowledge. Translation (for humans) is a tedious job, requiring a lot of research and artistic-like choice of words.
I think that we will sooner have machines writing their own novles than full machine transtaltion. The problem is just too hard.
Make even shorter URLs - 8LN.org
The biggest problem with the Turing test is that it is completely subjective. The smarter of a person you are, the smarter the computer will have to be to give an accurate response. Obviously that trait is not one that reflects intelligence.
Get someone dumb enough and they'll chat with ELIZA for hours at a time.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
The geek says it will all happen, it's just a matter of time.
Whats even more interesting from my point of view is to ask the question: If you consider the actual applications, perhaps even getting very specific, do the ratings and timeframes still match up. Obviously rating credibility is subjective somewhat, anyway. And similarly, trying to attach a time frame to technology is still at best an educated guess.
But if looked at from the point of view that a specific application of one of the SF technologies would have significant beneficial impact on quality of life for a lot of people, then perhaps the time frames change out of necessity. What if we figure out that by uploading a short program into the brain we could signal synapses, neurons and such to keep seratonin levels at a therapeutic level for people suffering from depression and give them a much better quality of life. Thats just a rough example I throw out, but I bet there are some serious applications seen in technologies of the future that will actually boost the timeframe through basic need.
Anyone else think so? Comments?
Just my $.02
WBGG
~WBGG~ "And I'm so sad like a good book I can't put this Day Back a sorta fairytale with you" ~Tori Amos
.........Neuromancer was the uncanniest thing i've read. He coined 'cyberspace' in 1984 (or was it '86?) he invented (or at least, popularized the idea in sci-fi), the "matrix" WAY before Keanu Cheese starred in that overrated film, and his characters were ultra cool examples of the "wired" human with organic-machine interfaces (that razor-girl was cool). Even the narrative style, with the dense but ambiguous portayals of the gritty subcultures of vast metropolises seems futuristic.
The guy was a prophet. Who knows what strange visions from his novels have yet to materialize?
I think he gives all scenarios a credibility rating of 10/10, even the Independence Day scenario. This guy must live in a different world. However, I've bought his predictions book, and I plan to read in twenty years time or so. It will certainly be funny.
I do not believe that we would want a warehouse full of smart bombs with hurt feelings any more than we would want people with hurt feelings being responsible for the deployment of such bombs. The military screens for such things through various personality and performance based tests.
However, I do believe that emotions are important to AI for one simple fact. For true AI to work, the computer must want to do something, not just react as programmed. I came upon this when I first played with an ELIZA program. I mean it could "learn" an "appropriate" response by asking what it should say if it had no prior knowledge of a topic, but the program never wanted to learn, it had no motivation. In fact, if it asked for a response, it would simply sit there waiting indefinately, whereas any living thing above a plant would go about doing something else.
Now, putting human emotions into a computer might not be the best of things, but what definetly needs to happen is some kind of feedback loop to positively and negatively reinforce the machine so that it has some kind of "desire" to change its behavior. Then, we will have true AI, and not before.
Using the brain to store digital information:
The problem is less one of interface than it is one of reprogramming neurons. While this might technically be possible, is there going to be any sort of information density advantage? Human memory has some really nice lossy compression, but that would make it a bad way to store digital data.
Computers "understanding" and "speaking" human language:
I think the only thing we've really learned in the last 30 years is that the problem is a lot harder than we thought it was 30 years ago. There are a multitude of problems, from simple parsing to having a large enough database to understand context. That, and we really don't know what problem we are solving. A speech interface to a database would seem to be to be a useful tool - "what is the weather going to be like today?" opens up the appropriate web page. "Find me a good price on a 1997 Honda Accord" hits the search engines, finds a few dealers in my area, and gets me some pages to view. We don't even have anything this sophisticated without the voice interface. (Speech-to-text + text-to-speech + Google) is not tons better than Google. Yet, we expect a program with the depth of knowledge and subtlety of reasoning that a human posesses. My own version of the Turing Test, "I'll believe it when I see it," suggests to me the system that can pass the Turing Test is a LONG way off.
Software as a weapon:
OK, ID was a poor example - I know I'm 1337 enough to reverse engineer alien technology in a matter of minutes and write a virus using a Mac, but that guy? But really, software as an weapon is only useful against those who use software, and only when that software is of critical importance. Even North Americans aren't THAT reliant on the 'net, although it might be wise to take precautions before we wire all of our brains together...
sig fault