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U.S. Plan For "Thinking Machines" Repository
An anonymous reader writes "Information scientists organized by the US's NIST say they will create a "concept bank" that programmers can use to build thinking machines that reason about complex problems at the frontiers of knowledge — from advanced manufacturing to biomedicine. The agreement by ontologists — experts in word meanings and in using appropriate words to build actionable machine commands — outlines the critical functions of the Open Ontology Repository (OOR). More on the summit that produced the agreement here."
What reason do you have to believe that all efforts will fail? A computer powerful enough to simulate all the cells in a brain would presumably be able to do everything a brain can do? Brains are like blank slates then take 25 years of training before they are regarded as fit for specialised jobs - a computer that was capable of forming semantic links and organising them properly would be able to give the illusion of understanding, and in fact can do a passable job in limited domains (thinking about for example medical 'knowledge base' type systems which take symptoms and work out possible causes). It is beyond our current understanding to build a proper thinking computer, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't work towards it. If we did it properly then we really would be able to build computers that could work out logical and more objective conclusions for problems (given enough factual input data to allow it to make unbiased 'decisions').
Unless you want to say that there is some mystical element to brains, there is nothing precluding the eventual design and building of 'sentient' computers, surely? Beyond our own fear of what would happen if we did such a thing, as evidenced by plenty of 20th century fiction. Building sentient computers could even be regarded as a type of evolution, as they would then be able to improve upon themselves at an exponential rate..
which is totally what she said
Actually the researchers themselves aren't saying anything at all about "thinking machines" -- that was just added by the blog summary. In fact, if you had read the document describing their plans, you would have seen that it doesn't even include the words "thinking," "AI," or "intelligence." All they want to do is create an Internet-accessible database of ontologies and ways for ontology-related services to interoperate. Your smears of them as "unethical" and "parasites" are completely uncalled for.