Ha! Thought so! I'm of the school that you should be able to take a clean machine (wiped with dev tools reinstalled) get a project and build a exact copy of the project. I might be a source code contol freak, but I've tried it the other way, and it stinks. (Whoops, we lost a DLL somewhere, does anyone have it their machine, anyone...?)
That's a worrisome thought. Most ideas about a "singularity" usually assume that once we interconnect all human intelligence, we will transcend to something else.
What if the reason we don't hear from anyone else in the universe is because they interconnected their stupidity globally? Good thing that could never happen to us, eh fellow Slashdotters?
A proper and more fun test would be like a Prisoners' Dilemma Tournament. Various humans and bots would be entered. Each would be paired for a set time, and then vote on if the other is a human or bot. Scoring would depend correct guesses. The bot which got the highest number of "human" votes would win. The human with the highest number of "bot" votes would be shot.
I really don't see a downside to this. (Just kidding. heh heh.)
Heh. Of course I was joking! I can just see teams of competing AI workers: one improving their Turing bot until it passes, and then other team tweaking their Turing Tester until it doesn't. (As I said, "gainful" employment for AI workers!:^)
A "bot detector" project might be interesting, but if fed Slashdot or USENET posts, the number of kooks and what-not would generate far too many false positives. (But would it really be wrong...? Hmm.)
They would assume the weird answers were from a weird person and wander off in the same manner as they usually would...
Well, you've spotted the problem. What we need to do is get a team together to create a Turing Tester program. Once we have a program that can reasonably determine the difference between a human and a simulation, then we can run objective, repeatable Turing tests! It goes without saying that this will be an ongoing project. As simulations are tweaked to try to fool the Turing Tester program, upgrades with have to be made to screen them out.
With any luck, and a good Turing Tester program, we shall see grand advances in the art of AI over the many years that we are employed.
Good morning America how are you?
Don't you know me I'm your native son,
I'm the probe they call The Pioneer te-en,
I'll be gone five million miles when the day is done.
Nighttime on Pioneer te-en,
Changing course at Jupiter, outer space.
Half way gone, we'll be there by morning (second star on the right)
Through the interstellar darkness
Climbing up from the well.
And all the clowns and policians seem
To fade into a bad dream
And the mundanes still ain't heard the news.
The universe sings its song again,
Earth passengers will please refrain
This probe's got the disappearing program blues.
I seem to recall something about tours of the site recently. I bet the area he got into is only classified top secret because somebody would have to get off their duff to unclassify it. And since it was probably classfied from the highest levels, some clerk couldn't do it.
That's who they'd go after first, because they have the money.
No no no! The idea is to go against weak opponents first. They don't have the money to wage a legal war, so they rollover and pay a licence fee. You keep going after small targets. If you feel lucky, you go after a target that will fight, but can't afford a legal dream team. If you win, the next victim^w company will fold much quicker.
With the big boys, you horse-trade patent licencing. "We'll let you use our patent, if we can use yours and a first-round draft pick."
You never want to go up against a company that can spend more on legal bills out of petty cash than your total assets.
Unlike trademarks, you don't have to defend a patent against all comers or lose it. You can pick your targets carefully.
"Well let me tell you a story about a man named Jed,
a poor lawyereer who barely kept his porche fed,
then one day he was sueing for some ghoul,
when he was given an patent by a fool. IP that is, licence gold...Robbery."
Brutal, but I could see it. What if you later obtained better compression software and wanted to recompress everything? Or if your video compression was lossy and you needed to re-edit?
Either that or these guys really comment their code!:^P
It goes through the rise and fall of the video game industry (which crashed hard in the early 80s)
That would have been 1983 or so when the price of chips skyrocketed. CPUs, memory, even 74LS glue were hard to come by for smaller companies. They even stripped some older boards for parts. *sigh*
They're also replacing the actors with cartoons. (Or I should say more cartoons!) They still have to hire voice talent, but for much less. No spending a couple months in Tunesia or Norway on location either. They already had so many computer graphics people that it might not cost them any more there.
Slashdot Mirror
I hope they signs posted not to lick the pipes, otherwise they could be looking at major legal damage! :^)
I was wondering what it looking at just then. Then it giggled a bit.
You see a turtle on its back, in the sun. It can't turn over. What do you do?
Ha! Thought so! I'm of the school that you should be able to take a clean machine (wiped with dev tools reinstalled) get a project and build a exact copy of the project. I might be a source code contol freak, but I've tried it the other way, and it stinks. (Whoops, we lost a DLL somewhere, does anyone have it their machine, anyone...?)
What if the reason we don't hear from anyone else in the universe is because they interconnected their stupidity globally? Good thing that could never happen to us, eh fellow Slashdotters?
No. I think I was right the first time, or was I? Argh, damn those AI people anyway! (Don't worry, I just got some spam for Valium. No problemo.)
Aggh, wait, the bot with the highest number of correct guesses would win, of course. (Pause .. pause .. is it two minutes yet?)
I really don't see a downside to this. (Just kidding. heh heh.)
A "bot detector" project might be interesting, but if fed Slashdot or USENET posts, the number of kooks and what-not would generate far too many false positives. (But would it really be wrong...? Hmm.)
Well, you've spotted the problem. What we need to do is get a team together to create a Turing Tester program. Once we have a program that can reasonably determine the difference between a human and a simulation, then we can run objective, repeatable Turing tests! It goes without saying that this will be an ongoing project. As simulations are tweaked to try to fool the Turing Tester program, upgrades with have to be made to screen them out.
With any luck, and a good Turing Tester program, we shall see grand advances in the art of AI over the many years that we are employed.
Don't you know me I'm your native son,
I'm the probe they call The Pioneer te-en,
I'll be gone five million miles when the day is done.
Nighttime on Pioneer te-en,
Changing course at Jupiter, outer space.
Half way gone, we'll be there by morning (second star on the right)
Through the interstellar darkness
Climbing up from the well.
And all the clowns and policians seem
To fade into a bad dream
And the mundanes still ain't heard the news.
The universe sings its song again,
Earth passengers will please refrain
This probe's got the disappearing program blues.
Yeah, sad. 2003, and we're still building half-assed pogo-stick rockets. (And not as well as we used to.)
Don't worry, it'll be reposted within days. :^P
What? You mean Los Alamos security is run by Disney? No, it's true -- we licenced the IP rights of the RCMP to Disney. Weird or what? :^)
I'd have figured that Kenny would have been safe inside that suit. Oh well...
I seem to recall something about tours of the site recently. I bet the area he got into is only classified top secret because somebody would have to get off their duff to unclassify it. And since it was probably classfied from the highest levels, some clerk couldn't do it.
No no no! The idea is to go against weak opponents first. They don't have the money to wage a legal war, so they rollover and pay a licence fee. You keep going after small targets. If you feel lucky, you go after a target that will fight, but can't afford a legal dream team. If you win, the next victim^w company will fold much quicker.
With the big boys, you horse-trade patent licencing. "We'll let you use our patent, if we can use yours and a first-round draft pick."
You never want to go up against a company that can spend more on legal bills out of petty cash than your total assets.
Unlike trademarks, you don't have to defend a patent against all comers or lose it. You can pick your targets carefully.
"Well let me tell you a story about a man named Jed,
a poor lawyereer who barely kept his porche fed,
then one day he was sueing for some ghoul,
when he was given an patent by a fool.
IP that is, licence gold...Robbery."
Either that or these guys really comment their code! :^P
You could say the same about the campus drug dealer. (The nasty drugs, that is. :^)
Okay, I realize the irony of my sig. I could take him. No problem, bring him on! I'll use .. sarcasm, badinage and metaphors, whatever it takes.
God: Nietzsche is dead.
That would have been 1983 or so when the price of chips skyrocketed. CPUs, memory, even 74LS glue were hard to come by for smaller companies. They even stripped some older boards for parts. *sigh*
Any bets that each segment has a plug for a new toy?
They're also replacing the actors with cartoons. (Or I should say more cartoons!) They still have to hire voice talent, but for much less. No spending a couple months in Tunesia or Norway on location either. They already had so many computer graphics people that it might not cost them any more there.