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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.""
No, more like in the 80s. In the 90s Apple tried to become another boring PC manufacturer to save their market share, only to see it erode it even more. That is, till the reverse takeover by the prophet.
Chriss
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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
Please read up on what, exactly, deus ex machina is. It is a literary term, describing the way gods would be lowered on to stage with a mechane (machine) to solve otherwise unsolvable problems that came up during the play. Because the "gods" would come from the "machine," the term "deus ex machina" was used - meaning, literally, god from the machine.
People using the term to describe Google sound like people who overheard the term once, had no idea what it meant, so they translated it and decided to take a literal meaning to the thing. I'm reminded of people using the term "body of crime" incorrectly (once even on CSI... *sigh*).
Rob
The Turing test is more than holding up a conversation. It is causing difficulty for the testor to decide if room A has the human or room B. It is easy to imagine if the testor is unimaginitive, how this test might seem dull. Questions like: Do you like the Red Sox, how big is the earth, or where is the nearest Starbucks, can all easily be answered by a computer. These rely on standard data mining techniques.
Suppose, on the other hand, the testor asks questions such as: "What's the meaning of Life?", "Please compare Emily Dickenson to Thoreau", or "What do you dream about?". While specific responses might be able to used, provided the programmer has guessed in advanced what might be asked, to actually have a *conversation* about these, is not likely to happen any time soon with a computer near you.
More importantly, to answer your question, being able to converse about these questions, I will submit, *requires* a thinking entity. Why? Because it's dependent on creation of new material -- somehow taking your old data, and coming to new conclusions.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deux_ex_machina
Testing the system?
I wrote this post a while ago and posted it on my blog and I didn't change it before posting. The error I inserted has since been fixed and the article has been expanded.
Don't know why the parent was modded down. Perhaps the moderator was as clueless as the author. Pedantic tirade, anyone?
For those who do not understand the term Deus ex machina---and are therefore smart enough not to use it in public---a good example of the term would be the eagles from Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. They were invoked to resolve a plot problem and seem to require a bit too much suspension of disbelief, since a reader is left wondering why the heck they didn't just use the eagles to fly to Mordor instead of engaging on that perilous quest. Also, see any of the works by Stephen King.
The Greek tragedian Euripides was infamous for resolving difficulties in his plays by lowering a god from a crane (the machina, in Latin) who would then resolve all the outstanding issues.
For the pedants who think the literal meaning might be good to describe artificial intelligence, think again. The term in Latin is a calque, which is a literal translation from the Greek, not perhaps a phrase the Romans would have coined.
"Will future ages believe that such stupid bigotry ever existed!" -- Ivanhoe
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