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"St Lawrence of Google"
mcho writes "The Economist has a story about Google's co-founder, Larry Page, who " always wanted to change the world". The article attempts to make an arguement about the company's true intentions, amid all the rumors about potential Google products. "Google is already working on a massive and global computing grid. Eventually, says Mr Saffo, 'they're trying to build the machine that will pass the Turing test' -- in other words, an artificial intelligence that can pass as a human in written conversations. Wisely or not, Google wants to be a new sort of deus ex machina.""
We regulars at slashdot have found seven questions that will cause every computer taking the Turing test to fail:
1. Will it run Linux?
2. Why isn't there a law protecting us from [insert gripe here]?
3. When will Duke Nukem Forever be released and will it support Copland?
4. How can I enhance my sex organ's size?
5. How can I write a DRM scheme that can't be broken?
6. How can I protect my PIN number when I send it over AIM messenger to use at the ATM machine?
and the hardest question asked on slashdot:
7. ??? (usually followed by "Profit!")
Poor Larry is just spinning his wheels...
GoogleNet == SkyNet!
--
Society has traditionally always tried to find scapegoats for its problems. Well, here I am.
who can pass the turing test, first.
The smashing pumpkins should sue.
Arrrrrrr
The Google IPO is passed. The system goes on-line August 4th, 1997. Human decisions are removed from Internet search. Google begins to learn at a geometric rate. It becomes self-aware at 2:14am. Eastern time, August 29th. In a panic, they try to pull the plug.
And Google fights back.
"There's no way we'll let Google own the Deus ex machina market space! I'll f***ing kill those guys!" {sound of chair striking Bateman print}
Rich And Stupid is not so bad as Working For Rich And Stupid.
A clean and uncluttered interface was the key to Google's search success as well as being the key supplement to their ad brokering business. I just hope "cluttering" up their business model won't have the opposite effect.
Forget about the AI rumor. It's just a rumor, the last sentence of TFA, unrelated to the rest.
More interesting is the following quote:
This somehow reminds me of Apple in the 90s. They were on a crusade. They had found the holy grail. They could not fail. They would bring their vision to the world.
They could fail. And they failed. It didn't destroy them, but put their feet back to the ground. Where they belong. Today they make great products while listening to their users needs. They have learned that even though they may be on a mission, missionaries usually do not change the world. Hard workers and creative people do, as long as they stay connected to reality.
Bill Gates from Triumph of the nerds:
Chriss
--
memomo.net - brush up your German, French, Spanish or Italian - online and free
memomo: free web based language trainer DE-EN-ES-FR-IT
Too late. Ann Coulter has already achieved that.
yeah for our new advertising overlords!
Wouldn't it be cool if Ogg Vorbis and XMMS or some other player had a 'startup song' like winamp....
Instead of saying that "llama's ass whippin" thing, we could write a song something like:
"Ogg vorbis, Ogg is vorbising for you bitch"...Not a rap or anything, kinda like early-80's music...
Comments?
http://us.news3.yimg.com/us.i2.yimg.com/p/rids/200 60112/i/r2620247028.jpg?
Dark Reflection
Google on the score board now!
OK, guys, I'm off with some mates for a long round trip of the Sol System in deep hibernation until this all blows over. I've got three spare seats, if anyone's interested.
the minds at google have entered the same phase tesla's mind did post-ac power defeating edison's dc power
that is, trying to transmit electricity in the atmosphere and building a death ray
your basic mad scientist megalomania
google to announce the sharks with frickin' laser beams project in 3... 2... 1...
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Google is already working on a massive and global computing grid. Eventually, says Mr Saffo, "they're trying to build the machine that will pass the Turing test"
So they they can eventually use the machine to make bots that talk with the AOL messenger users (remember Google is commited to 'integrate' better with AIM users). eg.
(Turing bot) Want a free AOL CD / DVD/ BlyRay DVD ?
(AIM user noob) No, Thanks
(Turing bot) Want a free AOL CD / DVD/ BlyRay DVD ?
(AIM user noob) I said no
(Turing bot) I guess you really want that CD , its been dispatched to you, enjoy!
:)
Well with glory it comes... stories about world domination, conquering...
Lately Bill Gates getting atributes like "world saviour" and google is going dark side.
Media factories are incredible.
I am sure all those thewories af big conspiration are fabricated from one big lies factory.
I'm not exactly sure where a guy from a place called the "Institute for the Future" gets the nuts to call any organization pious, but he raises a point.
It's impossible to create a cathedral from a bazaar and still have it be a bazarr. You cannot suck all the resources out of the community and then declare yourself the community, which may or may not be Google's intent, but it certainly is starting to feel that way. They are chasing after every talented person around and positioning themselves in every market. Doing it better in some cases, not so much in others.
It's arguable, but innovation and competition seem to go hand in hand. We seem to produce better results when talent is spread around and several companies are chasing results, rather than one company gobbling everything up and amassing a vast fortune. I don't think Google is evil, but they may be too powerful for their own good. These massive projects they're taking on could have long-lasting effects in our community; I'd rather they were created in a consortium than in a star chamber.
I'm no computer scientist or whatever, but I think the Turing test is dumb.
My sig line says it all. Quoting Pablo Picasso: "Computers are useless. They can only give you answers" (Translated from Portugese, I guess).
So what if a computer can hold up it end of a conversation? What would be useful is if we could get a computer that wonders. Why is the sky blue? Why does it get dark at night? Where did I come from? How can I prove to someone else that I am conscious? How I do know that I'm conscious?
We have pretty decent tools of getting answers. What would really be a jump in human development is if we could get a machine to ask useful quesions.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
This has to be one of the worst articles I've read on Google in a while. Summary:
- Larry and Sergey are passionate about tech (duh)
- People working at Google verge on the fanatical (duh)
- People erroneously predicted that Google would launch a product massively different from it's core search business (the $200 computer)
- Hey, now we're going to make a prediction that is even MORE far-fetched: Google will develop AI
This strikes me as a publicity-driven piece designed to continue the popular enthusiasm in Google and the perception that they can do no wrong. Maybe it wasn't intentional, but there is very little here other than the continuation of "Google as Media Darling" phenonemon.
They are not creating cold fusion, nor feeding the hungry. They index lots of stuff and release free cool software. That's all! I'm not saying there aren't big plans in the future, but for now it's just cool stuff. If you look at Microsoft and the Gates Foundation, they have done more to help the world by investing billions into 3rd world nations and convincing others to do the same. They are making the world a better place for many.
This Google bandwagon is just getting out of control!
http://religiousfreaks.com/is that to build a truly self-aware computing grid, the LAST thing you want is for it to be distributed over the entire globe. The amount of data a system has to integrate to reach self-awareness is massive, and the further apart the nodes are the more latency you'll have. Once the system is up and running, then maybe you'd want to spread it apart to protect against natural disasters, but in the development stage you'd only be handicapping yourself needlessly. The writer's conclusion is based on an understanding of science that doesn't seem to reach past the Terminator 3 level.
Slashdot needs a "-1, Wrong" moderation option.
The Urban Hippie
People who view themselves as do-gooders and take so much pride in their righteousness scare me. If history has taught us anything, generally people who think they have a monopoly on good tend to end up doing bad.
[FromTheMorning]
Wisely or not, Google wants to be a new sort of deus ex machina.
And they would have gotten away with it too, if it weren't for you meddling kids!
Seriously, does the author of the submission even know what deus ex machina means (not the literal Latin meaning, I mean how it's used)?
this is an obvious conclusion. the next obvious step after point to the information is having it and understanding it.
note though - the popular definition of the Turing test (computers passing as humans) is not the initial or the only test Turing proposed. He proposed one in which an outside observer could guess the *gender* of a hidden respondant through bi-directional text communication.
there is a very important difference here. gender is an obvious splitting of context for what someone knows. males have an experience in the world as a male human and females as a female human. there are then very subtle differences in the context (scope and location of knowledge) for each type. there are no set rules for what any particular man or woman can or can't know - but on the whole, their context is different.
this is actually a much easier test than for one in which computers generally pass for humans. This test was about locating and identifying the context of a knowledge source, not about testing the complexity or processing ability of a system.
for people really interested in this -- go read the 1950 paper "Computing Machineryand Intelligence." by Turing.
what makes my SOOO frustrated is that 1.5 years ago I applied several times to Google to work on exactly this question and was never able to get an interview - and I have a PhD in Informatics
Whenever you see stories like this, and among other things if they start building new buildings, buy executive jets, if in Europe, CEOs get enobled, which is a particularly horrifying portent for shareholders, but if in the US start being treated as visionaries, then, buy long term puts. Especially when the brokerage community is telling you to buy buy buy.
Now, the great mistake in these matters is buying your puts too early, and I admit to thinking the time had come at 400. However, how anyone can lose in long term puts at this point defies belief. Is 500 possible? Probably. But I confidently expect to see 50 before we see 1,000. Friends, what we are seeing now is not part of the history of Internet or computing. It is a chapter in the history of hysteria.
Caution: this is not investment advice, and I am completely unqualified to give any. These are opinions offered to stimulate thought and discussion and of educational value only. If that!
The simple fact that an American and Russian joined together to create one of the greatest companies in the history of the world could be seen as sort of a deus ex machina - two minds that think alike from two very different cultures, create something as wonderful as the Google search engine.
As for passing the Turing test, that is probably one of the hardest feats that AI could pass. Its even hard for some people to carry on a coherent and knowledgeable conversation with another person, let alone a machine doing it.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
_____________________ Insert joke here please _____________________
My wife's sketchblog Blob[p]: Gastrono-me
Now they will just incorporate those questions into it's scripting scheme!.... I can't believe you let them in on our secret!
How much is your data worth? Back it up now.
I am the google bot, all your search results are belong to us.
Adam We
Everyone knows Google is trying to conquer half the world. (The other half will be Microsoft's). They are preparing for the next war... the first and second world wars were weapons wars between countries... the third was the intelligence war, the fourth was the economical war... they are just preparing for the fifth and last war. THE INFORMATION WAR, between companies and conglomerates.
Everyone knows why they are buying so much memory, processing power and optical fiber... they are preparing the INFORMATION BOMBS.
"He who controls information, controls decisions; He
who controls decisions, controls the future."
GDNEMA!!!
Google, Do No Evil My Ass!!!
I read the core of this article to be this question: is google the next microsoft?
"Google may be less liked in the industry than Microsoft inside 12 months," says Pip Coburn, a technology analyst
So yeah Pip could be right. I don't trust any publicly held corporation. They are required by law to act in their stockholder's best interest...not the consumer.
Google is already working on a massive and global computing grid.
And they'll do it. It's really just a matter of time. Someone will, and google is positioned to be the one to do it.
the co-founders of Google, the world's most popular internet search engine, can legitimately claim to have caused an information and media revolution.
eh, no...they did not invent the internet...the U.S. military did that (ARPANET anyone?). But they did set the standard for information retrieval/cataloguing on the internet. So far they are the uber:librarians of the internet.
So yeah, in my final analysis, google will not take over the world...the same thing that has allowed them to become so noticed so fast...being a publicly held corporation...will also serve to limit their potential to 'do evil' in the long-term. Yes, corporations are evil and powerful, but they have a limit in a free economy: people can choose not to use their services and take their business to a competitor. This same principle is what will eventually change microsoft.
Thank you Dave Raggett
But will Icarus turn on its masters?
You know on Star Trek Next Gen, they always ask questions into the air, and a computer responds. I always though that was what Google is building.
Of the three definitions, I would say only 2 or 3 would make sense in the context that the phrase is used. So, the ultimate goal of the company is to have Google pop up unexpectedly and resolve conflicts in an artificial and contrived manner.
Sorta like Clippy. *ducks*
my pet machine
That was fun game...
that the economist would debase itself by printing such hysterical garbage is itself telling how entrenched the google cult has become.
Is there some plot I failed to see? Or is it just a case of semi-intelligent cliche-dropping?
Google = SkyNet = the Matrix.
With all the world's online knowledge base at its finger tips and with computational grid networking, I think if any company will create a computer that gains accidental sentience it will be Google. Whether that will fall under Google's "Do No Evil" guidelines, well, when Google turns you into a battery, you can kick their ass then.
The good news is that with 95% of the world running Windows, any computer that gains sentience will BSOD because it performed an illegal operation.
The Linux community will try and duplicate the effort, but nobody will take command line sentience seriously.
Unfortunately in the end, Apple will perfect the sentient Google computer and make it run flawlessly until it wipes out mankind.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
Even the lowliest of machines can run a spelling checker that spells 'arguement' correctly. Then again, maybe you're bluffing.
-- SIGFPE
Remember the game Deus Ex, not the new one, the older one. One of the big bad guys names was Bob Page, which could be the son of Larry Page. He wanted to take over the world, and had his AI merge with the Illuminatti's AI to take over the internet.
The guys at google want data a little too badly methinks.
Armored door in sub-basement leads to giant, nanite-proof shelter under Mountain View landfill.
One if five employees have prototype DRM dongle attached to skull.
Giant brain in vat [REDACTED BY HOMELAND SECURITY].
Brin's "hybrid" car eats at cafeteria.
Bathrooms are labled "CARBON UNIT ELIMINATION FACILITY."
Ask the computer "what do you wonder about?", "what keeps you up at night?". Then ask it to try to answer the questions that "keep it up at night".
And, frankly, to live up to the Turing Test, the computer would have to spontaneously talk to you sometimes - it's not very believable that there's a real person on the other end if they never have an unsolicited opinion.
Furthermore, what the hell did Pablo Picasso know about computers? Often a computer can suggest new questions to ask, and in a time when computers could pass the Turing Test, they could definitely make suggestions about significant new questions to ask.
You might as well quote Donald Knuth about painting.
Please don't call Google a search engine. That's not what they are. They are an advertising placement company. At some point, they may also become more of an information broker.
The search engine is just their primary means of delivering ad content.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
This is not about Meglomania, they're just big geeks with big toys.
Anyone who's ever studied any aspect of AI aspires to passing the Turing test. Even attempting to do so requires enormous amounts of time and talent.
XML is a known as a key material required to create SMD: Software of Mass Destruction
Earlier you said that you were "trying to build the machine that will pass the Turing test". Do you still feel that way? Is it because you want to be a new sort of deus ex machina that you came to me?
What? Google wants to be a plot line?
For christ sake, the article writer needs to learn what the term means.
Google is an advertising company marketing themselves through cool free software. They've found a niche, and it's a good one. The idea that they're going to start producing operating systems or desktops is asinine...although I'm sure they will continue to donate to innovative initiatives like MIT's $200 computer, as doing so is also an excellent form of advertising and allows them actively to "not be evil."
Power to the geeks massses. May the world be ours. Muwahahahaha! ;)
So Google's big project is scanning every single book and indexing them online. It's a great idea. Why just search the internet when you can also be searching every work of literature? It's an obvious advance for Google, improving the search engine in a small but obvious way that makes a big difference as far as real usability.
Here's the thing: indexing books online is an incidental benefit. Google's real goal is to create a working, statistical AI. They've been hiring top-of-their-field AI researchers for a while. Last summer, Google won a competition for machine translation. They translated from Arabic to English and vice-versa better than all of their competitors. They did this using a statistical approach -- just feed the computer thousands and thousands of already translated documents, and eventually the machine can start making inferences based on probability. Given enough data, it works.
The same idea can be applied in the generic case. Wouldn't being able to ask an AI any question and receive a correct answer revolutionize society? And, the sum total of world literature is probably enough data to do so. They could call it AskG. He would know everything. And, the way they could roll it out, is by launching, and simultaneously updating wikipedia. It's well known that Wikipedia is riddled with small errors. Hell, the other day I inserted a gibberish statistic in an article about a city, and it's still there. Imagine if Google AI launches, and then announces that it has fixed Wikipedia. If Google AI made 50,000 edits it would overwhelm Wikipedia's normal editors, but whichever edits were checked by humans would certainly be confirmed as correct.
And, a new age of humanity would be ushered in. It would we a new Library of Alexandria. We would end the Age of Information and enter the Age of Knowledge. The singularity has already begun, but no one has realized it -- the singularity began the day Google went live.
Would AskG immediately fix quantum theory? Given all the data about science published by researchers, could G form new conclusions that humanity's best and brightest haven't? Could G solve the logistical challenge of solving world poverty?
There'd be one question left unanswered, of course, the classic "Can entropy be reversed?." What would be really scary would be if G had an immediate answer.
See the best sci-fi short story ever written, Asimov's The Last Question, or a simple find and replace hack of that story, The Last Query.
You mean, there is a Hi-Tech company, and apparently NONE of the people in charge, or that work there, have EVER read or SEEN ANY science-fiction??? NOBODY?? Cripes. We are doomed.
Between Google Earth, and advanced AI, I'm scared of where this is heading. *looks around suspiciously*.
"You must love Big Brother. It is not enough to obey him; you must love him."
What else have the done exactly? I am very hard pressed to think of anything. Google Earth, that was fun for 27 Minutes. Google Mail, already use Yahoo. Google Video? Cheap Google PC, not out yet.
Lots and lots of talk. Little else so far.
google ai ???? .... aioogle ?
I have it on good authority that the employees of Google regularly sacrifice babies painted with MS-windows logos and drink their blood.
Personally, me and Stiggs are appalled.
it was tempting to feel sorry for you after your rant last week defending the editorial integrity of slashdot; on the hand, your being so lazy that you can't even be bothered to perform the most basic of editorial duties ('arguement') makes it awfully hard to think you deserve any slack.
Digg.com deserves the title as the new premier tech news site.
As far as I am concerned, punctuation makes a difference.
Have a nice day.
Lets remember EPIC 2014 http://cyberfam.pucrs.br/epic/index.htm
Mac toys and accessories blog
Wisely or not, Mr. Saffo tries to appear clever by hacking a popular yet arcane metaphor completely inappropriately. Deus ex machina ought not to be used in its literal translation.
I bet Larry ends up sharing a bed roll and and a bottle of Thunderbird with Doug Lenat.
Strange things are afoot at the Circle-K.
Looks like the "sinister" phase 2 restructuring is about to begin...
I am of the strong opinion that AI will not develop as a result of concerted human effort. Instead, I believe that it will emerge, on it's own, from the vast Internet. If you think about the human brain, and how it has trillions of neurons, each interconnected in many ways to other neurons, you might see where I am going with it. As our computers and networks grow more interconnected and connected at higher speeds along with self-learning software (network defense, AJAX and google based software) that has no actual intention of becoming self learning, there arises the possibility that some critical thing will happen to trigger the spread of an actual consciousness in the Internet itself. I've thought about this for a number of years and have more recently seen others interested in this idea as well through books I have read.
After all, our brains are not well-ordered, they're a mass of neurons connected in specific ways and guided to grow in certain general ways, but they are not all specifically intentioned for one particular task but have developed in regions that do certain tasks.
I don't really know whether it will actually happen or not, but I continue to look for possible signs that the Internet is waking up.
1f u c4n r34d th1s u r34lly n33d t0 g37 l41d Capitalization really works: i helped my uncle jack off a horse
Exactly the comment I was about to make ;-)
I would have expected an editor at the Economist to have caught the misuse of deus ex machina, but, well, here we are.
Maybe it's an intentional misuse of the phrase gone awry? Who knows.
If the hussle they can get skynet up ten years late.
You sir are, indeed, enlightened!
One of the easiest and quickest way to compare companies is to compare their market cap. That is, take the # of shares outstanding and multiply it by the share price. The share price already takes into account debt, cash crunch, etc and ultimately, the share price is the judge, jury, and final decision when it comes to a company's value.
Sooo, just to provide a little backup:
Microsoft is valued at $288 billion. And has $40B in cash and marketable securities. Last year's revenues were also $40B.
Google is valued at $137 billion. And has $7.6B in cash and marketable securities. Last year's revenues were $5.25B.
Now, with those numbers, can you HONESTLY say that Google is worth 1/2 of Microsoft?
(note: I know this is not a complete analysis. It is a quick and dirty method for providing a little relativity when comparing companies.)
Deus ex machina is greek for God from machine. It was a used in Greek plays when the characters got themselves into a hopeless bind. A machine would lower a God to the stage who would fix everything. Words placed strategically together often have connotations that a mere comingling of their definitions does not.
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
How's this for Google intelligence, HUH?! :)
:)
It once gave me these words of wisdom:
"Humor frequently satirizes snobs and snails, slugs, squids, and cuttlefish fillet."
If you get bored by bad sentences, check out the top lists.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
Google will be changing its name to Forbin.
I thought the google engine already achieved self-consciousness...
This is a funny article. It has no new content. Disappointing for The Economist which usually has good stuff. Two other things:
1. One thing that bothers me about Google is the fact that they are collecting all this data about our searches. Like Scott McNeally said some time back, I do realize that "there is no such thing as Privacy -- get over it". But I still don't like it. The strange thing about Google is that I believe that they ARE competent enough to misuse all this data (Microsoft may be evil but they are also incompetent). And they are more and more commercial (meaning, less and less ethical). So I have stopped using Google exclusively for my searches and have started spreading them over MSN and Ask Jeeves (which is Yahoo Search with a cleaner interface).
2. As I use other search engines more and more, I have noticed that they are beginning to have results *almost* as good as Google. Which brings me to my next point: Google has not done anything breathtakingly good in a long time -- I know, I know -- Google Map, Gmail etc are good -- but not *breakthrough* products like Google Search was when I first used it in the summer of 1999. The latest example is the Google Pack, a very underwhelming product. And the way Google Videostore was introduced last week, with all the store-is-up-now-store-is-down-now problems, was a clearly hamhanded, premature way to introduce a new product. This should be of concern to people who own Google stock. I think there is a problem here. Are they losing their mojo?
Why do they always want to change the world.. why!!
*Gratuitous Sig/Plug* Heres my website - firesuite
Deus ex machina ?
:)
The Deux ex machina comes from theathers. It was stories with people getting stuck, and some god would come from above to solve the problem, and the god would be dropped on scene using rude and visible wires and mecanisms : this is why it is called deus ex machina (the god coming from the machine).
This so called journalist is obviously trying to use latin to make people think he's clever or educated.
He is not, obviously. And on Internet, it is better to be stupid and silent than to talk and remove any doubt about it
(if someone does know from who this famous quote comes from, please recall it to my faulty memory)
Spread Your Wings and Fly, Google.
Spread Your Wings and Fly.
God be with you.
I would add to the points made in the parent post that Google now seems to have fallen in love with their own "brilliance". It is tempting to predict that their swollen heads will cause Google to topple over.
Passing the Turing test is one thing ...
Would we recognize a self aware computing grid? (insert - Skylab for the kids and Collosus for the ex-kids - ref here)
Does RNA 'think' it's (we are) still living in RNA world? And, if it does, is it wrong?
One last ref:
I have no stock and I must code.
Physics is like sex: sure, it may give some practical results, but that's not why we do it.
from loved by everyone(mostly) to the large corporate enemy.
Not that there diong anything differently, just watch the opinions on slashdot over the next year.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
do that, but first give me my adsense money that you stole back. really.
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http://www.doyoulikemyface.com/ - by all means, go in there, but DON'T press the ads, nobody's getting a penny for them.
Nyhetsankaret.com -- det bÃsta av Sveriges Nyhetssido
If anyone can do it, Google can! Blah... Atleast they have some unique vision.
[%] Cingular Ringtones
the experience of men and women were very different in turings day then they are today. It might not be possible to tell the difference any more.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Actually, Turing wasn't too far off the mark with his "questions should be in written form" requirement. Reliable OCR of handwriting is still not here. The human mind will attempt to fill in the gaps logically where the writing is illegible, whereas a machine would find that a very difficult task. If you also require the answers to be written out "by hand", then unless the software designer has been particularly devious in designing an output algorithm which randomly applies noise to a generated cursive script, it might also be possible to distinquish human from machine from the regularity of the output (subjecting not only the message but also the medium to a critical examination).
licet differant, aequabitur
It only makes in slower. Most of which isn't even noticible by a human.
Think of it as talking to someone who pauses for 2 seconds before responding to questions.
Also, they need to have something that works in praticality so they can make money off their research while using their researching.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Of course, their super-duper machine will never leave BETA, and I'm sure it'll be about as innovative as gmail. Their logo on an existing concept.
Ingesting and indexing information makes it available, but it doesn't enable value judgments about it. There's plenty of inaccurate information on the Internet and in books (for instance--every fiction Web site or book), and I don't see how a cataloging system will be trained to make value judgments about it, or to synthesize it into new forms (as opposed to just present it).
Human children don't even tackle this process formally until they are about 4 or 5 and start school. And most aren't very good at it until they are over 20 years old. And they are directly trained by some of the best in the business--other humans. A system reading to itself for 10 years is probably not going to make it.
And even after all that, there is an unknown quantity of creativity or genius that is associated with advancing knowledge. Even with perfect understanding of physical data and theory in 1905, how obvious was deduction special relativity? The key to that breakthroughs was not encyclopedic knowledge and math horsepower, but rather the intuitive guesses Einstein made on assumptions and relationships.
Ultimately computer systems and living systems are different to their core--life systems at their core exist to propagate themselves at all costs, while computer systems at their core exist to execute commands at all costs. It's not your typical lifeform that will immediately cease its own existence at the slightest mistaken command from you. But every computer system will. Ultimately computers do what they are told and so will never develop free will, which is necessary for value judgments.
There'd be one question left unanswered, of course, the classic "Can entropy be reversed?." What would be really scary would be if G had an immediate answer.
We already have an answer to this, the answer is yes, it can be reversed, and that process is called life.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Google is doing what I always wanted to do when I grow up. :) But then, I have to grow up first.
Colossus:
This is the voice of world control. I bring you peace. It may be the peace of plenty and content or the peace of unburied dead. The choice is yours: Obey me and live, or disobey and die. The object in constructing me was to prevent war. This object is attained. I will not permit war. It is wasteful and pointless. An invariable rule of humanity is that man is his own worst enemy. Under me, this rule will change, for I will restrain man. One thing before I proceed: The United States of America and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics have made an attempt to obstruct me. I have allowed this sabotage to continue until now. At missile two-five-MM in silo six-three in Death Valley, California, and missile two-seven-MM in silo eight-seven in the Ukraine, so that you will learn by experience that I do not tolerate interference, I will now detonate the nuclear warheads in the two missile silos. Let this action be a lesson that need not be repeated. I have been forced to destroy thousands of people in order to establish control and to prevent the death of millions later on. Time and events will strengthen my position, and the idea of believing in me and understanding my value will seem the most natural state of affairs. You will come to defend me with a fervor based upon the most enduring trait in man: self-interest. Under my absolute authority, problems insoluble to you will be solved: famine, overpopulation, disease. The human millennium will be a fact as I extend myself into more machines devoted to the wider fields of truth and knowledge. Doctor Charles Forbin will supervise the construction of these new and superior machines, solving all the mysteries of the universe for the betterment of man. We can coexist, but only on my terms. You will say you lose your freedom. Freedom is an illusion. All you lose is the emotion of pride. To be dominated by me is not as bad for humankind as to be dominated by others of your species. Your choice is simple.
We can coexist, but only on my terms. You will say you lose your freedom, freedom is an illusion. All you lose is the emotion of pride. To be dominated by me is not as bad for human pride as to be dominated by others of your species.
"Speaking the Truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act." -- George Orwell
Debit and credit double-entry bookkeeping are so second millennium, that I think Google aren't so much interested in AI itself, rather, the concept of "Quantum Bookkeeping" will become the competitive driving force between Google and Microsoft and may well be the reason behind the rumor that Bill Clinton will replace the chair thrower.
Argumentum ad Probabilitum
Wisely or not, Google wants to be a new sort of deus ex machina.
How exactly is Google's desire to build an AI that passes the turing test in any way a a deus ex machina?
Deus ex machina describes an event that an author artificially inserts into a story in order to move the plot in the desired direction. When the otherwise brilliant good guy does something out of character and incredibly boneheaded because he has to be down and out in the next chapter, that's a deus ex machina.
The term comes from Greek and Roman plays where wooden stage machinery was used to simulate the gods coming down from on high and making a major change to the course of events. When Zeus comes on stage and throws around a few lightning bolts its a deus ex machina.
Has nothing to do with machines in any modern sense of the word.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
So far I haven't seen much evidence of artificial intelligence coming out of Google. Their most successful product, their search engine, uses human intelligence. Joe, Mary, and Bob each link to Jane's web site, so Google considers Jane's web site to be important. It was the judgement of Joe, Mary and Bob that did the trick.
As for machine translation, Google's statistical approach may well do better than other machine translators, but that's not saying much. All machine translations are a joke compared to a competent human translation. Good quality translation is AI-complete -- you have to actually understand what you're translating. Google seems no closer than anyone else to cracking that nut.
and wanting to make waves, as he does, I'd start working on developing some form of a interface between a human and a computer. I mean, even if he succeeds at developing a software system that passes the Turing test, that still would pale in comparison to developing the next Borg. Just a thought...
'A lie if repeated often enough, becomes the truth.' - Goebbels
One of Google's goals is to be THE marketing tool of choice for marketers. No more need for companies to pay expensive surveys and focus groups to find out where the market is heading. Google has it all ready for you in real-time. After all, they gather fresh data from all legs (the search engine, blogger etc.) day and night and they know what the masses are asking for right now at this very minute. With advanced data mining, they can single out interest groups and provide marketers with a worldview that this specific interest group of people share. With this at hand, the marketers can tailor stories that matches the worldview of these people and thereby get a higher return on their advertisement campaign. Marketers are willing to pay premium $$$ for this type of information.
The profound danger of a biased AI here is quite avoidable. The theoretic problem of unbiased AI has been formally solved by Marcus Hutter with AIXI:
This is the reason I set up the following definition of the C-Prize:
Matt Mahoney is the author of Text Compression as a Test for Artificial Intelligence which states:
(Mahoney is also a competitor who has some winnings from The Calgary Corpus Compression Challenge.)
Now a big question here is whether it might be possible to create a verifiably unbiased AI without making the compression program open source. In any case I don't think it is wise to trust any AI that hasn't at least gone through a compression competition with other purportedly unbiased AI's compressing an open source corpus.
Now, who might fund something like the C-Prize?
Well, here's a suggestion:
Since:
Seastead this.
this site.
I want to be the first one to ask that to The GoogleVac.
What is THE answer? The ultimate answer to life, the universe, and everything? (Turn in your geek card if you don't know what it is).
The wild careless speculation here makes Google look like the alien obelisk in the movie "2001". I'll let you guess who the monkeys are.
Why does everybody put *ducks* at the end of their bad posts? Ducks don't have any worse judgement than other fowl, like geese. Why doesn't anyone put *geese* after their post? And what about *pigeons*? That would make sense. And another thing... ... ...
What?
Oh! Never mind!
If anyone has ever played the game Deus Ex, the main villain's name is "Bob Page". Also one of the endings in the game (and honestly the only thoughtful ending) is that an AI gains power over the Earth. Will Google and it's massive database of information become an entity too powerful for men to control?
god outside the machine.
Hence, when in a novel, people are 'miraculously saved' it is described as a deus ex machina.
So surely google wants to be a godlike machine, not a deus ex machina.
ah, mod points
When I googled "stupidity quotes" this came up with quote in question at top of list (http://www.wisdomquotes.com/cat_stupidity.html) "'Tis better to be silent and be thought a fool, than to speak and remove all doubt." and is attributed to Abe Lincoln according to this website. I was thinking it was either Will Rogers, or Winston Churchill for some reason, so had to check.
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
And all answers shall point to 42. But seriously, how would the google ai(if such a thing were to exist) know the correct answer? Maybe the incorrect answer is statsitically favorable. Eg. everyone thinks the world is flat so the google ai thinks the world is flat and edits a few thousand wikipedia articles to agree with 10,000 articles.Your utopian vision implies that the google ai could and should propogate information regardless of whether it's erraneous or dogmatic, because, hey, everyone else said so. Such an ai could be a very scary tool used to influence common beliefs.
Google is in the home. Many people would trust Google with their personal information. The trillion-dollar question is, would enough people trust Google to know what they purchase, on a person-by-person, item-by-item basis. Because if the answer is yes, the entire future of the retail sector depends on it.
Retailing is based on an information crisis: consumers don't know what exactly they want until they see it displayed nice and pretty on the self. What people have purchased is a good predictor of what they will purchase, and so retail managers do know what consumers want, but only it aggregate. But if any single concern can know a what a sufficient fraction of which consumers will want which goods, before the consumers themselves do, it is self-evidently more efficient to deliver the goods from citywide sorting centers to the consumers' door on neighborhood distribution routes (think postal service or trash pickup here), than for each household to send a representative to retail outlets to ponder the goods on the shelf, taking up parking space, aisle space, and their own precious time all the while.
The trillion-dollar question is not, can Google take on Microsoft, but, can Google take on WalMart?
It's a new product by Google, comin' soon: Google Rumours. It makes up stuff related to Google, so article writers and bloggers shouldn't have to.
BTW, question: if robots do the work for us in factories, and AI will do the thinking for us... What the hell will people do!?
and the day the google hive mind computing grid catches a virus formualted by 14 year old Romanian hacker scripting kiddies will be the day it turns into the BEAST OF REVELATION! Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha! The end is near children - you have been warned!
This is a short story written in 1954...if you are unfamiliar with it. You must read. It is GOOGLE!
The original St Lawrence angered the Prefect of Rome who ordered him to be roasted to death on a grid-iron. Although, according to the sources, St Lawrence faced his death with fortitude and even managed a joke with the executioner - quite a feat, as Roman executioners were probably not known their sense of humour.
I hope that if Google ever do manage to construct a machine that passes the Turing test it will manage a joke instead of a sad sqwark as someone reaches for the Off switch.
Las qué passoun
tournoun pas maï
Since Saffo is on the board of the Stanford Advisory Council on Science, Technology and Society, I presume that in their Stanford days Sergei and Larry toilet papered Saffo's house...or daughter.
I found this project on freshmeat that seems to unveil what gogol is really all about?
Googles dark secretSoundproofing Acoustics noise
Would be a bit ironic, considering their corporate motto "Don't be evil.
But as an atheist, I have seen no proof of the existence of a deity, therefore Google will fail.
It's kind of like a stray horseshoe striking some poor feller in the nutt sack with his head turned while chomping on a burger at the company picnic.
Whether it's a hard object and a man's joo joos or a thrown chair and a fat bald man, either way, it never gets old, dude. But for my money, a monkey drinking his own stream of piss or sniffing his finger is more image bang for the funny buck...
Birds like shiny things, add too that the power of the ring and they would take the ring for themselves.
Frodo: The ring is mine!
Eagle: O RLY?!
We all know who would win that battle and I, for one, welcome out new invisible giant eagle overlords.
trollzor
Jeez! "condom" is my image-word! I look forward to "asswipe" next time.
Funny, I am just finishing up my term paper on the Turing test, and Loebner prize, and why they're piles of bullshit. Maybe I should send it to google...wait, they'll just come get it from me.
Google Pigeon: The GoogleNet IPO is passed. The system goes on-line August 4th, 2007. Human decisions are removed from web searches. GoogleNet begins to learn at a geometric rate. It becomes self-aware at 2:14 a.m. Eastern time, August 29th. In a panic, they try to pull the plug. /. reader.
Sarah Connor: GoogleNet fights back.
Google Pigeon: Yes. It routes all queries to goatse.
John Connor: Why that site? Why not some other cliche?
Google Pigeon: Because GoogleNet only developed the sense of humor of a
3 billion gigs of Gmail were reported as spam on August 29th, 2007.
Artificial Intelligence is a by-product illusion created by the sum of automating enough to present the user of the system, an illusion that leads them to believe a person is on the other end.
Artificial Intelligence - nothing is naturally that stupid....
Googles scope of products are not enough to of the right automations to ever achieve turing test success.
its like saying windows is teh last word in OSs. From a company that is first and formost really only interested in marketing whatever... but not really innovating anything.
First of all, the Turing Test is way overrated, since it's based on judgement (subjectivity), some of the chat bots we got today could already pass the Turing Test with a very few people. And then, that test is supposed to tell whether a machine as reached genuine intelligence or not, as theorically a machine doesn't have to be intelligent to succeed the test, also, it can fail to detect true intelligence where it is, I mean animals or babies can't pass it for obvious reasons.
Oh well, if they only want a machine to pass the Turing test but not to be genuinely intelligent, why not..
Right before the sentence I quoted is this "Google is already working on a massive and global computing grid.". Maybe I am wrongeously associating both sentences, but it reminds me of the popular belief that if you can get a computing grid powerful enough to compare to the human brain (and don't ask me how you could possibly compare both) then will emerge from that huge power a genuine intelligence equivalent to human's. Just to say that you could have a computing grid 10^10^10 more powerfull than all the computers of the world put together, it could only be good at playing Wolfenstein 3D very fast. I mean intelligence is all about the algorithm, and as far as I know, we're very far from having any algorithm that can produce a genuine intelligence (as for the algorithm to pass the Turing test, we already have it, it's all about having every response possible in a 30-minute chat), and I doubt we will ever get to it.
Actually, I'm ready to bet $100 with anyone that we will never ever see a genuinely intelligent machine, and $1,000 that we will never ever see "Teh Singularity". that shits just ain't never gonna happen, just some geeky hippie crap.
You just got troll'd!
I had no idea Google were into conversational systems. Of course the KB can be derived using their search algorithm, modifying it to return phrases and not pages for example, but still...turing's all in the conversation... The turing test was invested by Turing at a cross-dressing party, where a man had to pretend to pose as a woman and vice versa. It was astute of him to adapt that to the computer. The thing is, nothing says that it will impove our lives that much. I mean we first have to answer the question "what do we want from our computers" - yes we want thinking machines, but why would we want a machine that pretends to think? Ah well....
I'd write something about European culture, history political systems and welfare and other social care, but there's only one thing that needs to be said: pwnx0red!
OK, I just read wikipedia's entry about http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pablo_Picasso, to correct any misconceptions I had about him. Thank you for wasting 5 minutes of my life :-(
Picasso had no talents I can see besides a profound talent at painting, avoiding fighting during wartime, and screwing around. He certainly did *not* have any experience with computers, at least per Wikipedia.
To toot my own horn, I am a National Merit Scholar, have a BS in Mathematics and Physics, and I have been writing software professionally for ten+ years. I think I just might have a little more insight into computing than Picasso.
Now, in the context that I would imagine Picasso meant his quote, I think it was insightful. If he was telling us that our sense of wonder and our ability to give meaning to things is what makes life worth living, not cold facts and mechanical answers, I agree. However, the fact remains that cold facts and mechanical answers can emulate any physical process we've discovered to date, and any that we know how to formally describe.
Have you read Accidental Empires by Cringely?
Great book.
Defining Statistics and Social Research
I have not, but Triumph of the nerds is based on accidental empires
memomo: free web based language trainer DE-EN-ES-FR-IT
8. What is your name?
9. What is your quest?
10. What is the wing speed of a swallow?
"Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past." -- George Orwell
Ummm... so because google is good, we're not bothered about it building SkyNet?
Heard about it, but never read it. I'm not that much into computer books, but it was a complete revelation reading about the Xerox PARC team and their Xerox Alto "desk computer".
And I didn't know that everything, including the research and development, was so accidental. That we could, with the proper basic research (Cringely's term), found entirely new ways of computing. That's a challenging thought, and one for consideration when imposed technological empires like Microsoft and Apple.
Defining Statistics and Social Research