That horse has already left the barn. Trying to close the gate will serve no purpose other than making more people aware that the code is out there for the taking. Another entity who is about to learn the power of the Streisand effect the hard way in its own flesh.
Forty years ago, AI sucked at speech recognition. Nowadays, it sucks somewhat less. Try to get Google Home or Alexa to understand something nontrivial (or something not canned) and act intelligently on it. Ask them NOT to tell you the weather forecast for tomorrow, and see how intelligently they are.
As it currently stands, AI is somewhat useful and fun. However, it will have to do much better to become something really useful. The hype coming from the community does not help.
Bearing in mind that, ever from the 60s, the AI community has come up, time and again, with exuberant forecasts that never came to pass, it is interesting that some keep issuing equally exuberant forecasts. A human brain emulation by 2020? The Singularity by 2030? Chances are the AI for the foreseeable will be more of the same: more and more systems that a excel at very, very narrow fields.
As someone who lived in London for a few years, and who took rides in London cabs in numerous occasions, this come across as a desperate attempt by the London cab lobby to delay the inevitable. Uber and Lyft is already pointing out that the official cab service is overpriced, and not all that good. But this is just the beginning, for it won't be too long now until autonomous cabs, far better at memorizing the city ways and plotting routes, will be taking over. The death knell for London cabbies has already rung. They will of course kick and scream before the bitter end, but they know their days are numbered.
The problem with DuckDuckGo is that it is not really that good when it comes to finding things in the net. At least it wasn't a few weeks ago, when I had to reluctantly stop using it as my default search engine after a month or so, during which its shortcomings became evident. I am all for ditching Google for DuckDuckGo - but only when the latter returns comparable returns. It's by no means there yet.
Amazing how India keeps coming with all sorts of grandiose public statements about all sorts of things, while consistently ignoring the plight of the more than 600 million Indian citizens who lack such basic services as sanitation, running water and electricity. Talk about having a huge chip in one's shoulder.
After all these years, I can't understand why Hollywood hasn't taken up the project. The story aside, an effective recreation of the interior of Rama, with all the counterintuitive (to us) physical effects, would in itself be worth the price of admission.
I'll carry on using Facebook for the only thing it is useful to me: to sign in easily into sites that require me to sign in before I can participate. I couldn't care less what kind of garbage populates my Facebook account afterwards. I do not log into explicitly anyway. That's what Facebook is good for: as a trash bin.
Business is business. You, and everybody else, will do whatever is necessary within the law (and without the law, when one can get away with it) to increase your bottom line. It is just a matter of undertaking a cost analysis study on each of you major steps. You know it and we know it. Please spare us the self-virtuous, good-goody statements and do not insult our intelligence, OK?
This just continues the tradition of other, similar gimmicks: beyond grins and giggles, and party games, their usefulness is very limited. What they can do, you can, for the most part, do just as efficiently with a keyboard. On the other hand, there are lots of tasks that you can do very easily with a keyboard, that seem to be beyond their grasp. Finally, they understand very, very little - command any of them NOT to give you the weather forecast for the weekend, and it will, unhesitatingly, give you the weather forecast for the weekend. These things will one day no doubt be very useful; for the time being, they are just toys, and not very entertaining ones, at that.
In a nutshell, the problem with DuckDuckGo is that it sucks. Or at least it did, a few months ago, when I used as my only search engine for two weeks. In the end, I had to go back to Google - they are just on an altogether different level. I really hope that DuckDuckGo will improve, and will eventually become comparable to Google. It is not there yet.
Freaking airplanes are a better example, if it is only because it is real. The lack of rules equivalent to net neutrality in airplanes has turned what never was a very pleasant experience into something borderline Kafkaesque. Huge middle finger to airlines world over.
It would mean the year of the linux desktop is here. Finally. At long last.
What for? What is it that you can't do in your Linux desktop that you could, if the year of Linux in the desktop were here? Other than offering a more enticing target for malware and crooks, that is. My hope is that the year or Linux in the desktop will never arrive. Fortunately, the solid work of the Gnome and KDE people is promising in that respect.
The big tech companies are pushing the digital assistant technology hard, but the truth is that, as things currently stand, the usefulness of such assistants is extremely limited. They are able to answer very specific, domain-limited questions which, for the most part, you could answer yourself probably just as quickly, if not more so, from your keyboard. Other than that, they do very little that is really useful. My Alexa device can turn lights on and off - which I can do faster by throwing a switch. I guess it is useful when you want to do it remotely. OK. As for the weather, both Alexa and Google (whatever it is called today) tell you the weather forecast all right - but their understanding is nonexistent. Tell them explicitly NOT to give you the weather forecast, and they will give you the weather forecast. Or say some nonsense that includes the word "weather", and they will give you the weather forecast. Try to get them to do something slightly complicated or ambiguous, the kind of thing that a child would accomplish without any problems, and they will consistently fail. Are they useful? In very, very limited ways. Are they worth the while? For grins and giggles, yes. For just about anything serious, what you would expect from a human assistant, no. Maybe in 10 years time. However, bearing in mind the track record of the AI community, whereby they have consistently gotten carried away in their projections, I remain skeptical.
It would probably make more sense for them to learn English and, say, Spanish (or Russian, or Arabic, or Chinese) rather than Esperanto and then English, even it takes them a bit longer to pick up English. With Esperanto one goes practically nowhere, in comparison to Spanish (or Russian, or...) and of course English. Another thing: the Spanish (or Russian, or...) and English literature bodies are both huge and rich. Esperanto, essentially zilch. One learns Esperanto because one is idealistic and/or naive. From a practical point of view, learning Esperanto is a monumental waste of time.
And, you predicted "Star Trek" technology where people can talk to a computer that's listening in?
Listening in, and understanding very little - yesterday I told my Google Home device "Do NOT give me the weather forecast for tomorrow" and, sure enough, without delay or hesitation, it did give me the weather forecast for tomorrow.
Slashdot Mirror
That horse has already left the barn. Trying to close the gate will serve no purpose other than making more people aware that the code is out there for the taking. Another entity who is about to learn the power of the Streisand effect the hard way in its own flesh.
Forty years ago, AI sucked at speech recognition. Nowadays, it sucks somewhat less. Try to get Google Home or Alexa to understand something nontrivial (or something not canned) and act intelligently on it. Ask them NOT to tell you the weather forecast for tomorrow, and see how intelligently they are. As it currently stands, AI is somewhat useful and fun. However, it will have to do much better to become something really useful. The hype coming from the community does not help.
Bearing in mind that, ever from the 60s, the AI community has come up, time and again, with exuberant forecasts that never came to pass, it is interesting that some keep issuing equally exuberant forecasts. A human brain emulation by 2020? The Singularity by 2030? Chances are the AI for the foreseeable will be more of the same: more and more systems that a excel at very, very narrow fields.
As someone who lived in London for a few years, and who took rides in London cabs in numerous occasions, this come across as a desperate attempt by the London cab lobby to delay the inevitable. Uber and Lyft is already pointing out that the official cab service is overpriced, and not all that good. But this is just the beginning, for it won't be too long now until autonomous cabs, far better at memorizing the city ways and plotting routes, will be taking over. The death knell for London cabbies has already rung. They will of course kick and scream before the bitter end, but they know their days are numbered.
It is like standing at the coast in France and noticing a butterfly in New York.
I suspect that probably is an easier undertaking. This is seriously cool.
The problem with DuckDuckGo is that it is not really that good when it comes to finding things in the net. At least it wasn't a few weeks ago, when I had to reluctantly stop using it as my default search engine after a month or so, during which its shortcomings became evident. I am all for ditching Google for DuckDuckGo - but only when the latter returns comparable returns. It's by no means there yet.
Amazing how India keeps coming with all sorts of grandiose public statements about all sorts of things, while consistently ignoring the plight of the more than 600 million Indian citizens who lack such basic services as sanitation, running water and electricity. Talk about having a huge chip in one's shoulder.
After all these years, I can't understand why Hollywood hasn't taken up the project. The story aside, an effective recreation of the interior of Rama, with all the counterintuitive (to us) physical effects, would in itself be worth the price of admission.
I'll carry on using Facebook for the only thing it is useful to me: to sign in easily into sites that require me to sign in before I can participate. I couldn't care less what kind of garbage populates my Facebook account afterwards. I do not log into explicitly anyway. That's what Facebook is good for: as a trash bin.
Good to see Samsung exploding into the market!
With such hot products, no wonder the public is burning with anticipation.
Business is business. You, and everybody else, will do whatever is necessary within the law (and without the law, when one can get away with it) to increase your bottom line. It is just a matter of undertaking a cost analysis study on each of you major steps. You know it and we know it. Please spare us the self-virtuous, good-goody statements and do not insult our intelligence, OK?
This just continues the tradition of other, similar gimmicks: beyond grins and giggles, and party games, their usefulness is very limited. What they can do, you can, for the most part, do just as efficiently with a keyboard. On the other hand, there are lots of tasks that you can do very easily with a keyboard, that seem to be beyond their grasp. Finally, they understand very, very little - command any of them NOT to give you the weather forecast for the weekend, and it will, unhesitatingly, give you the weather forecast for the weekend. These things will one day no doubt be very useful; for the time being, they are just toys, and not very entertaining ones, at that.
In a nutshell, the problem with DuckDuckGo is that it sucks. Or at least it did, a few months ago, when I used as my only search engine for two weeks. In the end, I had to go back to Google - they are just on an altogether different level. I really hope that DuckDuckGo will improve, and will eventually become comparable to Google. It is not there yet.
Freaking airplanes are a better example, if it is only because it is real. The lack of rules equivalent to net neutrality in airplanes has turned what never was a very pleasant experience into something borderline Kafkaesque. Huge middle finger to airlines world over.
It would mean the year of the linux desktop is here. Finally. At long last.
What for? What is it that you can't do in your Linux desktop that you could, if the year of Linux in the desktop were here? Other than offering a more enticing target for malware and crooks, that is. My hope is that the year or Linux in the desktop will never arrive. Fortunately, the solid work of the Gnome and KDE people is promising in that respect.
Do I have to elaborate?
The AI community is infamous for overpromising and underdelivering for fifty years now. That's MS's territory.
For, who uses gmail for anything serious?
The big tech companies are pushing the digital assistant technology hard, but the truth is that, as things currently stand, the usefulness of such assistants is extremely limited. They are able to answer very specific, domain-limited questions which, for the most part, you could answer yourself probably just as quickly, if not more so, from your keyboard. Other than that, they do very little that is really useful. My Alexa device can turn lights on and off - which I can do faster by throwing a switch. I guess it is useful when you want to do it remotely. OK. As for the weather, both Alexa and Google (whatever it is called today) tell you the weather forecast all right - but their understanding is nonexistent. Tell them explicitly NOT to give you the weather forecast, and they will give you the weather forecast. Or say some nonsense that includes the word "weather", and they will give you the weather forecast. Try to get them to do something slightly complicated or ambiguous, the kind of thing that a child would accomplish without any problems, and they will consistently fail. Are they useful? In very, very limited ways. Are they worth the while? For grins and giggles, yes. For just about anything serious, what you would expect from a human assistant, no. Maybe in 10 years time. However, bearing in mind the track record of the AI community, whereby they have consistently gotten carried away in their projections, I remain skeptical.
I had never heard of Dragon Box. Thanks for the pointer, major studios. And please become familiar with the Streisand Effect.
It would probably make more sense for them to learn English and, say, Spanish (or Russian, or Arabic, or Chinese) rather than Esperanto and then English, even it takes them a bit longer to pick up English. With Esperanto one goes practically nowhere, in comparison to Spanish (or Russian, or...) and of course English. Another thing: the Spanish (or Russian, or...) and English literature bodies are both huge and rich. Esperanto, essentially zilch. One learns Esperanto because one is idealistic and/or naive. From a practical point of view, learning Esperanto is a monumental waste of time.
It remains the same niche thing that it has always been. Its importance and global impact are negligible, and likely to remain so forever.
MS also did not want to give up on MS Bob, Clippy, Kin, Zun, Kinect, Lumia, etc.
Cars: even after most cars are electric there will still be the petrol heads who like to drive their own classic car.
Until such cars are banned. And, this time, no constitutional amendment will come to the rescue.
And, you predicted "Star Trek" technology where people can talk to a computer that's listening in?
Listening in, and understanding very little - yesterday I told my Google Home device "Do NOT give me the weather forecast for tomorrow" and, sure enough, without delay or hesitation, it did give me the weather forecast for tomorrow.