Slashdot Mirror
Human vs Computer Intelligence
DrLudicrous writes "The NYTimes is running an article regarding tests devised to differentiate from human and computer intelligence. One example are captchas, which can consists of a picture of words, angled and superimposed. A human will be able to read past the superposition, while a computer will not, and thus fails the test. It also goes a bit into some of Turing's predictions of what computers would be like by the year 2000."
I did the gimpy test.
ResultsIt switched pictures on me! Honest!!
The difference between computer and human intelligence is the human ability to revel in his. That is, taunt others. Until a computer can get in my grill and explain to me on a colorful fashion that I am nothing more than a grab-ass-tic piece of *human* sh!t, then I won't think much of computers.
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I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Sure, computers aren't as smart as people. Wow.
Computers are not good at complex pattern recognition. Wow.
For the record, computers can recognize words like this, just not very easily. With a big enough dictionary and a lot of patience, you'd be suprised at what they can do. While still an undergrad I was able to write a rather simple program that would recognize images of the cardinal numerals, even if they were highly mangled, and worked with a grad student in building something that could pick out certain features of a rotated image and by comaring with some sample features, rotate the image correctly.
-Space for rent
We are never going to have a machine that is truly "human". Let me explain.
That doesn't mean we won't have intelligent machines that can do just about anything intellectually that a human can do. A human being is more than just a smart computer. Our behavior is governed not only by the higher logic of our brain, but also by millions of years of bizarre -- often obsolete -- instincts. If you yanked a brain out of a body and hooked it to a computer, it would no longer be truly human because of the lack of hormonal responses that come from every part of the body.
It's simply going to be too hard/impractical and, frankly, useless to make an intelligent machine that mimicked every hormonal reaction and instinctual mechanism.
We will have intelligent machines, but we will never have human machines.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
A I mentioned at the bottom of this journal entry. I think a new version of the Turing test should be whether a computer can tell the difference between a Human and a Computer.
"Not knowing when the dawn will come, I open every door." - Emily Dickinson
[Kicks first man in balls]
First Man [falls over]: "AAAAAHH!"
Me: "Human."
[Kicks second man in balls]
Second Man [falls over]: "Gffffff-!"
Me: "Human."
[Kicks third man in balls]
Third Man [falls over]: "..."
Me: "He's the robot! Get 'im!!!"
What is music when you despise all sound?
Searle's Chinese Room theory. Strong AI vs. Weak AI and human interaction/interpretation. Fun Stuff. http://www.utm.edu/research/iep/c/chineser.htm
It's very easy to do a search at news.google.com with some of the words from the story summary and come up with the story elsewhere.
Yes, it's a nytimes.com link, but it's without the registration.
You entered: noses
Possible responses: nose
Result: FAIL.
Wohoo! I'm a robot! This test proves it! Vegas here I come!
Why does this test make me feel like I just had a run-in with John Ashcroft?
Another area not discussed in the article is vicarious experience, that is, experience and knowledge you have because some cause and effect relationship existed with someone or something else.
For example, the computer's tactile interface has to touch the oven and say 110 deg C, as opposed to taking as fact "I heard a human mention that Unit 5 already did that and it was 110 deg C, so I accept it as fact that it is 110 deg C".
I know I'll get modded down for this, but I wonder what the limits of questioning the computer / human participants was? (Article said they quized participants to see if they could tell who was human and who was a machine). Like, could they ask "What number am I thinking of?" The machine would blank out and the human would stupidly blurt out "69 dude!"
You have a point, though. Data can read, unlike 23% of the American population.
"I have opinions of my own, strong opinions, but I don't always agree with them." -- George H. W. Bush
Mitch Kapor and Ray Kurzweil have bet $20,000 on whether a computer will pass the Turing Test by 2029.
Apparently, there would have to be alt tags that read "Type the word FOO to signify you are a human, not a register bot."
I suppose it could generate a spoken list of words in a sound file that is linked to from the image. The alt tag could then read "Please click to listen to a series of words. Enter the words to signify you are a human, not a register bot."
bytesmythe
Hypocrisy is the resin that holds the plywood of society together.
-- Scott Meyer
And furthermore, if what you need for the task at hand is a machine that behaves and thinks in every way just like a human being, then just hire a human being to do it.
It's the differences between computers and humans that make computers so damn useful. Tell a human to add up a list of 200 numbers and he'll likely take a long time, and get the wrong answer because humans suck at repetative boring tasks beyond the limit of their attention spans.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
Involves measuring pupil dilation when asked a series of personal questions...very good method.
CAPTCHAs have several applications for practical security, including (but not limited to): Cool, eh?
What I mean is, I don't think an intelligent being would be capable of creating something that is more intelligent than himself.
The machines need to be programmed by humans, who are limited by their own inteligence.
Can God make a rock so big that he can't carry it himself?
"The majority is always sane, Louis." -- Nessus
http://slashdot.jp
I simply use my "Taco Test" (Inspired by the Invader Zim cartoon) to thwart chat bots and telemarketers. It's an amazing, powerful test that no computer or automated script can withstand.
I ask the "suspected bot" if they like tacos. If they give me an intelligent answer, they are not a bot. If they give me an answer like "Wanna see my hot pics go to http://192.168.1.112/hotbabezzzz.pl?2345" Then they are a bot.
This test also works on telemarketers in a slightly different fashion. I tell them to "STOP... I'll only buy your product if you send me a taco with it. If not, no deal." since there are big logistical problems with sending me a taco, they are thwarted every time. I'm sure this test would work equally well with any obscure food item.
Computers can be specifically programmed to solve puzzles such as a this...if a test arises that supposedly tests for "human" intelligence, humans can simply modify the code so that it can solve that sort of puzzle.
That's what Gary Kasparov was complaing about when he played against Deep Blue the first time...there was a whole team of IBM programmers modifying the code during the game to specifically counter Kasparov's playing style. It wasn't a reflection of machine intelligence, it was an example of human adaptation imposed upon Deep Blue.
I'll form my OWN solar system! With blackjack! And hookers!
Once you devise a test system, someone can write non-AI software that can fake it and pretend to be human by knowing what it needs to for the test. Only a real human can tell human and machine intelligence apart, not a systematic test. That's why Bladerunners had to manually test the androids, instead of just letting a machine do it. Real-time human insight is key to testing machine intelligence.
11*43+456^2
>> You have a point, though. Data can read, unlike 23% of the American population
He also got laid, unlike 97% of the slashdot population.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
The CAPTCHA website (how do you pronounce that, anyway) has a list of possible applications of CAPTCHA. The first mention is online polls, and recalls an event in 1999, when Slashdot (they use http://www.slashdot.com for some reason) had a poll for the best graduate CS curriculum. Carnegie-Mellon and MIT wrote competing poll-bots that stuffed the poll boxes. The point was supposed to be that a CAPTCHA would have prevented this. In my opinion, however, this was probably the most accurate Slashdot poll ever. Obviously, MIT wrote the better poll bot, since it stuffed more votes, and they didn't even start until somebody noticed that CMU was stuffing. Hence, the winner of the stuffing contest turned out to be the true winner of the poll.
Today's Sesame Street was brought to you by the number e.
In other words, can the computer detect the information in the same form that the human can? Can a human read a grocery store bar-code as easily as a computer? No. Can a human read one of those bit-boxes on the FedEx shipping label as easily as a computer? No. Can a human read the Tivo-data sent on the Discovery channel as easily as the computer? No. But none of those failures means the computer is more intelligent, just more capable of recognizing the information that is there.
Both the computer and the human can recognize "moon/parma", but intelligence comes into play when the human starts thinking of Drew Carey and humming the theme music. Intelligence is not just collecting information, it is doing something useful with that information.
I took the 'Stumpy' test - where it shows you six pictures and asks you to choose a word that describes them.
:)
Looks like their system is hosed right now because it showed me 4 pictures of horses, 1 of a cowboy, and one of a turtle.
When it asked:
What are these pictures of?
I answered "things"
apparently it didn't like my answer.
Funny thing though, the images are being pulled by image number from the getty images database. You could write a piece of software to lookup the images at getty, pull the keyword list (that getty assigns to all photos) and cross reference the list to get the answer.
--
Then this got me thinking about the whole thing in general. My answer WAS correct. Reminds me of the Cheers episode where Cliff is on Jeopardy and answers the final Jeopardy question:
"Who are three people who have never been in my kitchen."
Not the answer they were looking for, but is it wrong?
I was being a smartass the other day while watching sesame street with my daughter. They had pictures of 4 animals and asked which one didn't belong.
kangaroo
rabbit
grasshopper
fish
they, of course, were looking for 'fish' - because the other three live on land or travel by hopping.
I popped up that the answer could be the kangaroo - because the other three are native to north america. Or it could be the grasshopper, as the only one with an exoskeleton.
My wife reminded me that it was a kid's show.
It comes down to the fact that if an strict mechanism is used to judge the answers (like a computer) it may not be able to handle legitimate answers from humans.
--
Seems both the questioner and questionee need to be intelligent to participate.
"Asking if a computer can think is like asking if a submarine can swim"
Did anyone notice that a lot of these "human" test are also the same ones used for things like hearing/eye tests, color-vision impairment, etc.
This knocks out computers, which lack the intelligence/programming (so far) to differentiate between conflicting objects to make out a letter/numbers.
It also may knock out humans with vision problems though, especially those with colour-vision issues.For those with hearing problems, the sound test isn't good either.
It seems that right now, computers trying to translate these puzzles probably perform along par with old-folks. This also might mean that quite a few seniors may have issues getting a yahoo account though.
Abort, Fail, Retry? I know how to fix it, but do you human?
A Good Troll is better than a Bad Human.
I don't believe that Turing proposed the Turing Test as the test to use, but rather as a "mathematical proof" that you could construct such a test.
Basically he said if you could not tell the difference between a computer and a person then you would have to say it was intellignet. ie. this is a way of establishing an upper-bound test - not necessarily that this is the best test.
Unfortunately, IMHO, the AI community and other latched onto this test and put effort into fulfilling the Tring Test rather than more practical and useful goals.
If you asked "Did you sleep well last night?" and the computer said "Me not sleep, me computer." (or some question on some other biological function) then you could probably determine the difference between a human and a computer. This need not, however, preclude machine intelligence.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Hate me!
Sorry, my friend, but you're off by 20%. According to the UN, 97% of Americans can read. Not as many was we'd like, but far from 23% illiterate.
That depends on whether you count level 1 literacy (that's roughly equivalent to being able to recognize street signs) as being able to read.
"I have opinions of my own, strong opinions, but I don't always agree with them." -- George H. W. Bush
the question of whether computers use intelligence the same way as humans use intelligence has long been determined through the 'chineese room'.
the point of John Searle's Chinese Room being is to see if 'understanding' is involved in the process of computation. if you can 'process' the symbols of the cards without understanding them (since you're using a wordbook and a programme to do it) - by putting yourself in the place of the computer, you yourself can ask yourself if you required understanding to do it:
Minds Brains and Programmes (The Original Chineese Room):
http://www.bbsonline.org/documents/a/00/00/04/8
the complementary question - 'is the human brain
a digital computer' is answered by the same author:
Is the Human Brain a Digital Computer (John Searle):
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Papers/Py104
Summary of the Argument:
1. On the standard textbook definition, computation is defined syntactically in terms of symbol manipulation.
2. But syntax and symbols are not defined in terms of physics. Though symbol tokens are always physical tokens, "symbol" and "same symbol" are not defined in terms of physical features. Syntax, in short, is not intrinsic to physics.
3. This has the consequence that computation is not discovered in the physics, it is assigned to it. Certain physical phenomena are assigned or used or programmed or interpreted syntactically. Syntax and symbols are observer relative.
4. It follows that you could not discover that the brain or anything else was intrinsically a digital computer, although you could assign a computational interpretation to it as you could to anything else. The point is not that the claim "The brain is a digital computer" is false. Rather it does not get up to the level of falsehood. It does not have a clear sense. You will have misunderstood my account if you think that I am arguing that it is simply false that the brain is a digital computer. The question "Is the brain a digital computer?" is as ill defined as the questions "Is it an abacus?", "Is it a book?", or "Is it a set of symbols?", "Is it a set of mathematical formulae?"
5. Some physical systems facilitate the computational use much better than others. That is why we build, program, and use them. In such cases we are the homunculus in the system interpreting the physics in both syntactical and semantic terms.
6. But the causal explanations we then give do not cite causal properties different from the physics of the implementation and the intentionality of the homunculus.
7. The standard, though tacit, way out of this is to commit the homunculus fallacy. The humunculus fallacy is endemic to computational models of cognition and cannot be removed by the standard recursive decomposition arguments. They are addressed to a different question.
8. We cannot avoid the foregoing results by supposing that the brain is doing "information processing". The brain, as far as its intrinsic operations are concerned, does no information processing. It is a specific biological organ and its specific neurobiological processes cause specific forms of intentionality. In the brain, intrinsically, there are neurobiological processes and sometimes they cause consciousness. But that is the end of the story.
--
best regards,
john