.. while we may debate what Microsoft's big positive contribution to the computer industry was, pushing aside the original user-friendly computer was not one of them. Many people still do use 1 button macintoshes (often with Linux) and are very happy using them, thankyouverymuch.
Having said that, I do agree that if I were in Gates' shoes I would be pretty annoyed at the suggestion that such a massive donation was just a cheap ploy to distract attention from a court case.
Nope, but the Turing test is the closest approximation to a test for intelligence that we have. Unfortunately it is pretty cyclical in itself (something is intelligent if it seems to be intelligent).
Sorry for the cheesy subject, but it makes a point. I am the organiser of a Java opensource project ( see here and despite wide interest (from RMS among others) only one other person has actually made significant contributions to the code, and to be honest, I am not sure if I could handle more than 3 other coders. Some may say that this is as a result of bad management, however I have put much effort into documenting the existing architecture, and even as it is, I find myself distracted from the coding.
It is my observation that on most open-source projects there are a very small number of core developers (often friends in real life), but alot of users who submit bug reports and pester about the next release. Often the process of delegation can be more time-consuming than just doing it yourself. They say that human brains can only really cope with working in groups of up to 7 people anyway. Having to work over the Internet makes this even more difficult.
Belief networks are basically computers applied to Bayesian probability theory... hardly groundbreaking new conecpts.
Neural Nets and GAs may indeed find new uses all the time, but firstly, both fields have separated themselves from mainstream AI research. Neural nets basically perform pattern matching, in a manner largely unrelated to how our brains work, and GAs, while useful in some arenas, it is generally function-fitting stuff, they are not likely to pass the Turing test any time soon.
Ok, so your are saying that despite the term "Intelligence" not having a proper definition, the term "Artificial Intelligence" does?! I never doubted which word, "Artificial" or "Intelligence" was posing the problem. It does not detract from the fact that AI still lacks any clear vision of how to achieve its goals, or even what its goals are. You complain that the definition of "intelligence" is constantly changing, however is this not one of the features of a poor definition? The fact remains that the field of "Artificial Intelligence" lacks a definition for Intelligence, so how can they claim to be making any sort of progress?
My views on the state of AI is not extrapolated from one project, that project was merely an example. My views were build up over 4 years studying in one of the worlds foremost AI research centers.
I am not really bitter, there are many things I like about the Eduni AI dept, and about the people in it. However if there is one thing that I have learned in discussions on SlashDot, it is not to understate your case (see new subject;-).
Further, I do not claim that some things that have come out of AI research have proved useful, linked lists, and expert systems are two good examples. But what do linked lists have to do with making something think?! While in the past there were some good ideas in AI (GAs, Neural Nets), these were done to death in the 70s and early 80s. There is nothing I am aware of now that is significantly in advance of what people were doing 25 years ago.
WRT what I know about that joke project, my knowledge is gleaned from an hour long lecture given to us by the girl that did it, she also answered some questions that I put to her as a result of my disblief at how lacking in creativity the whole thing was (although I was more polite at the time!). I stand by my belief that NOTHING was learned about intelligence from that, and many other such projects, other than how not to achieve it.
The definition of Artificial Intelligence you point to is cyclical. It defines itself in terms of "Intelligence" (see first line!). Any dictionary that used part of the phrase it was defining in the definition would be laughed at, I think this definition deserves the same treatment. Minskey's definition is the same. Show me a definition of AI that doesn't used words that themselves require just as much clarification as "Artificial Intelligence" does, and I will eat my hat (or would if I had one).
I have no problem with young fields per se, I just have a problem with young fields that aren't even trying to grow up.
I know that there are other undergraduate courses in Europe that cover AI, but how many of them are taught by an actual AI department?
Firstly, I was a student, not a researcher. I am directing my "harsh comments" at those that claim to be contributing to the field through research, namely PHD students, and staff. Undergraduate students are there to learn about a field, not nescessarily to contribute towards it.
To give an example of the stupid excuses for research that have taken place in the department, consider a PHD student who decided to do research into making computers tell jokes - a vaguely interesting idea I conceed. The end result of her PHD was a system that produced one very specific kind of joke, by looking up words with double meanings, and then slotting them into a template. 99% of the jokes that resulted were crap, the one percent that may actually pass for a joke ("Q:What kind of soap do gay men use? A:Fairy liquid") were just chance. Now this is 4 years work, for which she got to call herself a "doctor", and is actually one of the projects that the EdUni AI dept was proud of!
As for what I personally have contributed to AI, not much. Why? Because the field is without foundation, even the term "Artificial Intelligence" lacks a proper definition! While I conceed that "Intelligence" is a difficult word to define, surely stating the nature of the field you are researching should be the first thing anyone does, before diving head first into research. In contrast, I have contributed to other fields, namely mathematics and computer science. Two grown up subjects.
During my degree in Artificial Intelligence we participated in a similar Lego based game, this time robot-rugby. We were given kits (not Mindstorms, but an in-house concoction) and told to build robots that played this game. During the course of the project my team and I became somewhat disillusioned with the whole thing, and while some came up with hopelessly elaborate software, we made our robot bumble about randomly, grasping the ball if detected. While we didn't win, we did come second in our section.
In my opinion most current research in AI is non-creative rubbish. I am not unqualified to make such a statement given that I went through probably the only, and almost definitely the best respected undergraduate degree involving AI in Europe, and am an ex-president of the Edinburgh University AI Society. If there was one thing I learned from it is that most people doing AI research are either kids who just think it sounds cool, but don't have the intelligence or creativity to progress the field one little bit, or they would rather talk about AI than actually do anything about it.
I work as a consultant, and thus my hours are monitored quite closely, however a friend of mine has just started working for Salamon Bros, and was basically give the "option" to opt-out of the working time directive - however it didn't take an expert to figure out that his career would suffer if he didn't. For a young guy like that, the idea of damaging your prospects from the outset is anathema.
The problem is that most IT people enjoy their work, they get a huge amount of satisfaction out of having a healthy system. The problem is that many of the people they have to work with, and much of the software they have to use, are talantless idiots whose mantra is "If it works, its finished".
One simple technical solution to prevent people from being able to "prove" that they voted a particular way would be to allow them to vote more than once, but where only their first vote counts. There would be no indication on their webpage that this is the first time they voted, thus there would be no way to prove, even if someone was standing over them watching everything they type, that this was their "real" vote. This is prolly not a perfect solution, but it might be the type of approach we need.
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What about underweight hackers?!
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Hacker's Diet
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· Score: 2
Strange that American hackers seem to have problems with being overweight, I, and many of my friends, are underweight if anything! How do you guys drag your fingers away from the keyboard long enough to eat? I know I can't!
Being serious though, I think being underweight is also a serious problem for hackers. It can lead to bad health, and lack of concentration. I visited my aunt recently (who has a phd in nutrition) re: my eating habits and I am slightly below the minimum healthy weight for someone my height. The fact that I don't eat meat probably doesn't help, but it is possible to have a perfectly healthy diet without meat. My aunt told me loads of interesting stuff - for example, did you know that iron (something we all need) will not be absorbed if you consume it with dairy products? This means that when Cornflakes claims that it is full of Iron, it may be right, but very little of that iron will be absorbed. Further, if you don't eat meat as I do, protein is also something that you need to think about. There are actually two types, and most non-meat foods only have one of those types, where as both are needed.
Perhaps someone who knows about these things will post an Eating HOWTO for hackers to/.
Yeah, I exchanged a few emails with him about a year ago. It is a nice enough idea, but it is clear that he doesn't have much of a clue. He waffles on about his "fractal" operating system, and when you actually try to pin him down on what it actually does he just hits you with more waffle.
There were two types of code, the first, what was actually "Enigma" was indeed known publicly to be vulnerable in the 1970s, however the more sophisticated version, known as "fish" was not known to be crackable at the time. I assume "fish" was the code that the Irish were using.
I wonder how many people know the story of Alan Turing, inventor of the first computer (arguably), and the field of Artificial Intelligence? This was one of the main guys that cracked the Enigma code. Winston Churchill said of Alan Turing "I wouldn't say he won the war for us, but I dare say we would have lost it without him"! Strange then that not long after that he was convicted of being a homosexual and killed himself after being forced to take oestrogen (the female sex hormone) by the government.
I'll tell you why - so that the British government could sell the Enigma encryption algorithm to other countries and then spy on them! I reacall hearing somewhere that as recently as 1985, prior to the signing of the Anglo-Irish agreement (an agreement designed to rob the IRA of some of its excuses for causing trouble, but which was a bit of a failure) the British could read all correspondance between the London Irish Embassy and Dublin. How? Because the Irish were using the Enigma code which had been sold to them by the British, and nobody outside British and American intelligence knew that it had been cracked! Apparently the rights to the Enigma code were given to the British as compensation for WW2, what else would you do with a broken encryption code, if not sell it!
I would say the same to you. The reason why I had to use the --nodeps option when installing Gnome was not that I was missing stuff, but because not everything I install is in RPM format, and thus the RPM database doesn't know about all of my libraries and how up to date they are. I am aware that there is software such as installwatch and inst2rpm which can take care of this, but I have only just started using that to ensure that my RPM database is current.
Perhaps you should think a bit more before opening your mouth and accusing others of stupidity!
I don't like flames, or bickering within the Linux community (not to be confused with healthy debate), which is why I want to draw people's attention to it and the problems that it can lead to.
Could this possibly be the beginning of the end of harmony in the Linux community - yet we have had the KDE/GNOME scuffles, but the real people behind these projects have always kept their hands clean... until now. We have the Gnome coordinator slagging off KDE, and now one of RedHat software's most visable people leaving RedHat pretty unhappy. Is it really the case that Gnome, despite being GPLd and thus more free-software-friendly, is something of a cancer - in the sense that it is breeding such discord in the Linux community? Up until yesterday (when an upgrade broke it) I was using Gnome and was reasonably impressed with it, although it still needs some work (couldn't persuade it to add new applets to the panels, and is it actually possible to install the RPMs without using --nodeps?). KDE is a good piece of software, but the whole QT issue still worries me a bit, even with the whole QPL thing - I would rather it was GPL. Also I think the interface is a bit too-Windows.
Anyway, what is going on people - is the Linux community loosing its grip?
Slashdot Mirror
Having said that, I do agree that if I were in Gates' shoes I would be pretty annoyed at the suggestion that such a massive donation was just a cheap ploy to distract attention from a court case.
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It is my observation that on most open-source projects there are a very small number of core developers (often friends in real life), but alot of users who submit bug reports and pester about the next release. Often the process of delegation can be more time-consuming than just doing it yourself. They say that human brains can only really cope with working in groups of up to 7 people anyway. Having to work over the Internet makes this even more difficult.
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Neural Nets and GAs may indeed find new uses all the time, but firstly, both fields have separated themselves from mainstream AI research. Neural nets basically perform pattern matching, in a manner largely unrelated to how our brains work, and GAs, while useful in some arenas, it is generally function-fitting stuff, they are not likely to pass the Turing test any time soon.
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Further, I do not claim that some things that have come out of AI research have proved useful, linked lists, and expert systems are two good examples. But what do linked lists have to do with making something think?! While in the past there were some good ideas in AI (GAs, Neural Nets), these were done to death in the 70s and early 80s. There is nothing I am aware of now that is significantly in advance of what people were doing 25 years ago.
WRT what I know about that joke project, my knowledge is gleaned from an hour long lecture given to us by the girl that did it, she also answered some questions that I put to her as a result of my disblief at how lacking in creativity the whole thing was (although I was more polite at the time!). I stand by my belief that NOTHING was learned about intelligence from that, and many other such projects, other than how not to achieve it.
The definition of Artificial Intelligence you point to is cyclical. It defines itself in terms of "Intelligence" (see first line!). Any dictionary that used part of the phrase it was defining in the definition would be laughed at, I think this definition deserves the same treatment. Minskey's definition is the same. Show me a definition of AI that doesn't used words that themselves require just as much clarification as "Artificial Intelligence" does, and I will eat my hat (or would if I had one).
I have no problem with young fields per se, I just have a problem with young fields that aren't even trying to grow up.
I know that there are other undergraduate courses in Europe that cover AI, but how many of them are taught by an actual AI department?
PS. Where did you do your MSC? Edinburgh?
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I always said that moderation was a bad idea, tyranny of the majority etc etc.
Go on, moderate this one down too... shame there isn't a "Critical of SlashDot" reason tag for moderation.
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To give an example of the stupid excuses for research that have taken place in the department, consider a PHD student who decided to do research into making computers tell jokes - a vaguely interesting idea I conceed. The end result of her PHD was a system that produced one very specific kind of joke, by looking up words with double meanings, and then slotting them into a template. 99% of the jokes that resulted were crap, the one percent that may actually pass for a joke ("Q:What kind of soap do gay men use? A:Fairy liquid") were just chance. Now this is 4 years work, for which she got to call herself a "doctor", and is actually one of the projects that the EdUni AI dept was proud of!
As for what I personally have contributed to AI, not much. Why? Because the field is without foundation, even the term "Artificial Intelligence" lacks a proper definition! While I conceed that "Intelligence" is a difficult word to define, surely stating the nature of the field you are researching should be the first thing anyone does, before diving head first into research. In contrast, I have contributed to other fields, namely mathematics and computer science. Two grown up subjects.
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In my opinion most current research in AI is non-creative rubbish. I am not unqualified to make such a statement given that I went through probably the only, and almost definitely the best respected undergraduate degree involving AI in Europe, and am an ex-president of the Edinburgh University AI Society. If there was one thing I learned from it is that most people doing AI research are either kids who just think it sounds cool, but don't have the intelligence or creativity to progress the field one little bit, or they would rather talk about AI than actually do anything about it.
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The problem is that most IT people enjoy their work, they get a huge amount of satisfaction out of having a healthy system. The problem is that many of the people they have to work with, and much of the software they have to use, are talantless idiots whose mantra is "If it works, its finished".
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Being serious though, I think being underweight is also a serious problem for hackers. It can lead to bad health, and lack of concentration. I visited my aunt recently (who has a phd in nutrition) re: my eating habits and I am slightly below the minimum healthy weight for someone my height. The fact that I don't eat meat probably doesn't help, but it is possible to have a perfectly healthy diet without meat. My aunt told me loads of interesting stuff - for example, did you know that iron (something we all need) will not be absorbed if you consume it with dairy products? This means that when Cornflakes claims that it is full of Iron, it may be right, but very little of that iron will be absorbed. Further, if you don't eat meat as I do, protein is also something that you need to think about. There are actually two types, and most non-meat foods only have one of those types, where as both are needed.
Perhaps someone who knows about these things will post an Eating HOWTO for hackers to /.
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Strange then that not long after that he was convicted of being a homosexual and killed himself after being forced to take oestrogen (the female sex hormone) by the government.
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Perhaps you should think a bit more before opening your mouth and accusing others of stupidity!
I don't like flames, or bickering within the Linux community (not to be confused with healthy debate), which is why I want to draw people's attention to it and the problems that it can lead to.
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Anyway, what is going on people - is the Linux community loosing its grip?
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