Mechanical Reasoners Battle It Out In Sydney Today

Stephan Schulz writes "Today, the CADE ATP System Competition will pit about 20 of the worlds most powerful mechanical mathematicians against each other — and for the first time they can win not only honour, but a monetary prize. The systems will reason against the clock on tasks ranging from undergraduate math problems and Cluedo-like puzzles to figuring out the possible responsibility for terrorist attacks from giant knowledge bases. If you think that is not impressive enough, they are doing it at a rate of 12 problems per hour, all day long. The competition starts at 10 a.m. in Sydney, Australia, which is midnight UTC. Live results will be available at the competition page. For added geek appeal, most of the contenders are available under open source licenses, so if you are weak in logic you can hack up your own brain extension and run it on an iPhone."

Comments

Confusing summary

[langelgjm]

Was I the only one who was confused by the summary? When I read "mechanical mathematicians", I was thinking along the lines of the Bomba and Curta, not computer programs.

Re:Confusing summary

[cmacb]

Ditto. I went looking for some use of the word "mechanical" other than this "summary". Didn't find any.

So I'm guess that this article was submited in Chinese and then run through several language translations (maybe even mechanical ones) before being rendered into "English".

Re:More info please

[stephanruby]

That includes deduction games such as Clue (aka Cluedo), logic puzzles like you can find in magazines, proving mathematical theorems, etc.

If they're in magazines already, I hope they can use google and just google the answers.

Run it on an iphone?

[knarf]

I'd say there are many better options to run an extention to your brain on than a proprietary, chained and DRM-encumbered device with a remote kill switch under control of a for-profit organisation...