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."
Jeff Goldblum's "virus"
by
PhantomHarlock
·
· Score: 4, Funny
I can't believe they used that scene from Independence Day as an example. It's the worst, most banal attempt at science fiction that hollywood has ever made. How much did apple pay to have their laptop in it? The idea of Jeff Goldblum as a '133+ h4x0r with a magic powerbook is worse than "This is a unix system, I know this!" from Jurassic Park.
Re:Jeff Goldblum's "virus"
by
gusnz
·
· Score: 4, Funny
Scene from the alien mothership:
Alien Commander: Are you sure this thing is secure?
Alien MCSE Tech: Trust us, it's unhackable. We built it with our reliable DRM 2 encryption code, and we've told the puny Earthlings not to publish exploits...
Superman III: Richard Pryor's Super Computer O' Evil
Sneakers: The Black Box
--
Chas - The one, the only. THANK GOD!!!
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
evilviper
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Real Intelligence is not a matter of subjectivity, except in some fringe cases. Even the most idiotic human can be distinguished from an intelligent gorilla. That is precisely why a less subjective test is needed.
The ability to solve problems, draw conclusions, faith, all are harbingers of intelligence. There is no doubt that a machine can be designed to warehouse conversations it can recall when needed, and learn new word definitions and such when needed. We have the technology to do that now, and it certainly wouldn't be a sentient being. That is the problem with the Turing test.
Re:Guessing prophets.
by
Black+Parrot
·
· Score: 3, Funny
> Hasn't anyone learned from the mistakes of A.C. Clarke and his predictions? I'm quite sick of it.
I'm still waiting for that technology that's indistinguishable from magic. When it hits Radio Shack I'm gonna be the first kid on my block to get it, and then I can fit a brim onto my dunce cap and pass myself off as a wizard.
> Concept: The ability for artificially intelligent devices to feel emotions.
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?
Emotions can very clearly lead to inappropriate behavior. Granted, there may be times when emotions lead to positive behavior. But do they ever lead to positive behavior that couldn't be programmed into an AI without emotions? Unless that's the case then emotions are something known to be dangerous and not known to be useful, and therefore should be avoided as a life-threatening bug.
Granted, it may be a fact of nature that "intelligence" (whatever that is) is impossible without emotions. But unless/until that has been demonstrated, let's keep emotions off our wish list.
Now back to Part I:
> Concept: The idea of a computer becoming so complex it can understand, reason, listen, speak and interact in the same way as a human, including using deception and self-deception.
> Now we have: Machines that learn, software that breeds/replicates. 'Narrow AI,' i.e. computers that can perform 'narrow' tasks that previously could only be accomplished by human intelligence, such as playing games (e.g. chess) at master levels, diagnosing electrocardiograms and blood cell images, making financial investment decisions, landing jet planes, guiding cruise missiles, solving mathematical problems and so on. Currently exponential progress curve showing no sign of slowing down.
First, as with emotions, I dispute the desirability of AI agents that can knowingly deceive themselves and others.
Second, I'm not convinced that much of the laundry list in the second paragraph qualifies as "intelligence" instead of merely "appropriate algorithms". (Are we going to have to call MATLAB an intelligent agent because it's good at certain kinds of math problems?)
Third, I am amazed that they would say that we're making "exponential progress" in anything that might reasonably be called "AI". My games don't seem to ship with AIs that are "exponentially" smarter than the ones that shipped five years ago. Dish up some facts, please!
That said, here's a link to a paper [160K PDF] that someone turned me on to recently. It's from a talk some AI researchers gave at a conference last year. They start by asking where is all the cool movie-style AI, and answer with the observation that no one is working on it. Their proposal to remedy that situation is that AI researchers should get involved in game AI, because many modern games require agents that are more "intelligent" than the common solve-one-problem stuff that has been coming out of the AI community for the last few... decades.
I think the authors of that paper overstate their case by calling game AI agents "human level" AI, but at least it's a step in the right direction. It's a bit of a light-weight article, but it's an easy read. And it would be way nice if 2/3 of the world's academic AI researchers started working on gaming applications!
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...
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I can't believe they used that scene from Independence Day as an example. It's the worst, most banal attempt at science fiction that hollywood has ever made. How much did apple pay to have their laptop in it? The idea of Jeff Goldblum as a '133+ h4x0r with a magic powerbook is worse than "This is a unix system, I know this!" from Jurassic Park.
It has been said that so-called "futurists" oversell the short term, and undersell the long term.
... is only ten to twenty years away, people!
(I'll go read the article, now, with low expectations.)
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
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.
...everyone will still get 99% of their predictions wrong :).
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> Hasn't anyone learned from the mistakes of A.C. Clarke and his predictions? I'm quite sick of it.
I'm still waiting for that technology that's indistinguishable from magic. When it hits Radio Shack I'm gonna be the first kid on my block to get it, and then I can fit a brim onto my dunce cap and pass myself off as a wizard.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
First, from Part II:
> Concept: The ability for artificially intelligent devices to feel emotions.
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?
Emotions can very clearly lead to inappropriate behavior. Granted, there may be times when emotions lead to positive behavior. But do they ever lead to positive behavior that couldn't be programmed into an AI without emotions? Unless that's the case then emotions are something known to be dangerous and not known to be useful, and therefore should be avoided as a life-threatening bug.
Granted, it may be a fact of nature that "intelligence" (whatever that is) is impossible without emotions. But unless/until that has been demonstrated, let's keep emotions off our wish list.
Now back to Part I:
> Concept: The idea of a computer becoming so complex it can understand, reason, listen, speak and interact in the same way as a human, including using deception and self-deception.
> Now we have: Machines that learn, software that breeds/replicates. 'Narrow AI,' i.e. computers that can perform 'narrow' tasks that previously could only be accomplished by human intelligence, such as playing games (e.g. chess) at master levels, diagnosing electrocardiograms and blood cell images, making financial investment decisions, landing jet planes, guiding cruise missiles, solving mathematical problems and so on. Currently exponential progress curve showing no sign of slowing down.
First, as with emotions, I dispute the desirability of AI agents that can knowingly deceive themselves and others.
Second, I'm not convinced that much of the laundry list in the second paragraph qualifies as "intelligence" instead of merely "appropriate algorithms". (Are we going to have to call MATLAB an intelligent agent because it's good at certain kinds of math problems?)
Third, I am amazed that they would say that we're making "exponential progress" in anything that might reasonably be called "AI". My games don't seem to ship with AIs that are "exponentially" smarter than the ones that shipped five years ago. Dish up some facts, please!
That said, here's a link to a paper [160K PDF] that someone turned me on to recently. It's from a talk some AI researchers gave at a conference last year. They start by asking where is all the cool movie-style AI, and answer with the observation that no one is working on it. Their proposal to remedy that situation is that AI researchers should get involved in game AI, because many modern games require agents that are more "intelligent" than the common solve-one-problem stuff that has been coming out of the AI community for the last few... decades.
I think the authors of that paper overstate their case by calling game AI agents "human level" AI, but at least it's a step in the right direction. It's a bit of a light-weight article, but it's an easy read. And it would be way nice if 2/3 of the world's academic AI researchers started working on gaming applications!
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
If they want a Babel Fish, they're going to have to make sure they have the Towel, the Pile of Junk Mail, and a bunch of other crap.
I eventually got mine, but I hope nobody asks me how I did it. I don't remember and I'm not about to figure it out again!
If one really cared, they could just do a web-search for a walk-through. I'm sure one is out there.
30 years for a Babel Fish. Shesh.
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
Moderation Totals: Wrong=2, Stupid=3, Total=5.
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