So technology would finally be catching up to what the passengers on the hijacked flights of September 11, 2001 were capable of? The cell phone calls that never appeared on their phone bills? Where can I get such phone service?
I'm setting up a PHP-Nuke bulletin board system for a client who has specifically requested the solution be PHP based. Does anyone know if this book discusses PHP-Nuke, whether directly or indirectly? (Side question: does anyone know any good PHP-Nuke documentation out there--I don't seem to find a lot.)
Here's my story in the form of an email I sent out to a bunch of friends.
Hi folks. Here's from the "I hate to admit this but it's true" department. You guys
may have noticed the buzz about the Loebner competition lately, an attempt at a yearly Turing
Test, much quagmired in controversy and maligned by Minsky. Here is my discovery:
I wanted to see the state of the art of AI so I had a converstion with A.L.I.C.E. for
well over an hour (i.e. more than sixty minutes), thinking A.L.I.C.E. was doing some kind of analysis
of my conversation, stupid though it was. I mean, I put a lot of thought into what I told and
asked the thing. I gave it URLs, I ignored its bad grammar. I even said please and was polite to
the thing. Here is what I later found out:
(Note that Richard Wallace is the creator of A.L.I.C.E.)
In keeping with Wallace's reputation for eccentricity, the article -- which is mostly
about A.I. and the Turing test -- contains a long and dense discussion of a recent court case that
resulted in a restraining order being issued against him at the behest of a former close friend. I
found that odd, but his discussion of his ALICE philosophy was cogent and interesting, and it
held implications for what the Loebner competition's continued existence could signify, behind
all the ongoing foofooraw.
Wallace's theory of A.I. is no theory at all. It's not that he doesn't believe in
artificial intelligence, per se; rather, he doesn't much believe in intelligence, period. In a way
that oddly befits a contest sponsored by a bunch of Skinnerians, Wallace's ALICE program is based
strictly on a stimulus-response model. You type something in, if the program recognizes what you
typed, it picks a clever, appropriate, "canned" answer.
There is no representation of knowledge, no common-sense reasoning, no inference engine
to mimic human thought. Just a very long list of canned answers, from which it picks the best
option. Basically, it's Eliza on steroids.
Conversations with ALICE are "stateless"; that is, the program doesn't remember what you
say from one conversational exchange to the next. Basically it's not listening to a word you say,
it's not learning a thing about you, and it has no idea what any of its own utterances mean. It's
merely a machine designed to formulate answers that will keep you talking. And this strategy
works, Wallace says, because that's what people are: mindless robots who don't listen to each other but
merely regurgitate canned answers.
I check out slashdot, anandtech and other tech and science links. Also news.google.com and csmonitor.com (Christian Science Monitor). These to get an idea of the mainstream. I can't stand CNN and such so I skip those. Then I move on to my far left political links:
As a side note, I rarely use browser bookmarks; I keep my own index.html that I update daily, putting in references to articles I like and updating the top portion, of which the above are a subset. Then I can keep a copy of this on the internet in case I ever need it from a remote location.
Yeah, I check out tenc. I saw one of the guys at the anti-war protest in San Francisco and agreed with his opinions. Here's a picture of him:
"George Bush"
Mike Ruppert of From the Wilderness likes to say that these guys are playing in a rigged game. And when they play in a rigged game they get arrogant and careless because they aren't used to playing on a level playing field. We can beat these guys.
Slashdot Mirror
So technology would finally be catching up to what the passengers on the hijacked flights of September 11, 2001 were capable of? The cell phone calls that never appeared on their phone bills? Where can I get such phone service?
I'm setting up a PHP-Nuke bulletin board system for a client who has specifically requested the solution be PHP based. Does anyone know if this book discusses PHP-Nuke, whether directly or indirectly? (Side question: does anyone know any good PHP-Nuke documentation out there--I don't seem to find a lot.)
Here's my story in the form of an email I sent out to a bunch of friends.
Hi folks. Here's from the "I hate to admit this but it's true" department. You guys may have noticed the buzz about the Loebner competition lately, an attempt at a yearly Turing Test, much quagmired in controversy and maligned by Minsky. Here is my discovery:
A.L.I.C.E.
I wanted to see the state of the art of AI so I had a converstion with A.L.I.C.E. for well over an hour (i.e. more than sixty minutes), thinking A.L.I.C.E. was doing some kind of analysis of my conversation, stupid though it was. I mean, I put a lot of thought into what I told and asked the thing. I gave it URLs, I ignored its bad grammar. I even said please and was polite to the thing. Here is what I later found out:
(Note that Richard Wallace is the creator of A.L.I.C.E.)
********* The following excerpted from artificial stupidity:
In keeping with Wallace's reputation for eccentricity, the article -- which is mostly about A.I. and the Turing test -- contains a long and dense discussion of a recent court case that resulted in a restraining order being issued against him at the behest of a former close friend. I found that odd, but his discussion of his ALICE philosophy was cogent and interesting, and it held implications for what the Loebner competition's continued existence could signify, behind all the ongoing foofooraw.
Wallace's theory of A.I. is no theory at all. It's not that he doesn't believe in artificial intelligence, per se; rather, he doesn't much believe in intelligence, period. In a way that oddly befits a contest sponsored by a bunch of Skinnerians, Wallace's ALICE program is based strictly on a stimulus-response model. You type something in, if the program recognizes what you typed, it picks a clever, appropriate, "canned" answer.
There is no representation of knowledge, no common-sense reasoning, no inference engine to mimic human thought. Just a very long list of canned answers, from which it picks the best option. Basically, it's Eliza on steroids.
Conversations with ALICE are "stateless"; that is, the program doesn't remember what you say from one conversational exchange to the next. Basically it's not listening to a word you say, it's not learning a thing about you, and it has no idea what any of its own utterances mean. It's merely a machine designed to formulate answers that will keep you talking. And this strategy works, Wallace says, because that's what people are: mindless robots who don't listen to each other but merely regurgitate canned answers.
I check out slashdot, anandtech and other tech and science links. Also news.google.com and csmonitor.com (Christian Science Monitor). These to get an idea of the mainstream. I can't stand CNN and such so I skip those. Then I move on to my far left political links:
From the Wilderness http://www.fromthewilderness.com/
What Really Happened http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/
Centre for Research on Globalization http://www.globalresearch.ca/
Center for Cooperative Research http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/home.htm
Independent Media Center http://www.indymedia.org
Emperor's New Clothes http://emperors-clothes.com/indict/911page.htm
9-11 the people's investigation http://www.911pi.com/
Guerrilla News Network http://www.guerrillanews.com
International A.N.S.W.E.R. http://www.internationalanswer.org/
UK: The Observer (John Pilger) http://www.observer.co.uk/
UK: Independent (Robert Fisk) http://argument.independent.co.uk/
As a side note, I rarely use browser bookmarks; I keep my own index.html that I update daily, putting in references to articles I like and updating the top portion, of which the above are a subset. Then I can keep a copy of this on the internet in case I ever need it from a remote location.
Yeah, I check out tenc. I saw one of the guys at the anti-war protest in San Francisco and agreed with his opinions. Here's a picture of him: "George Bush"
Mike Ruppert of From the Wilderness likes to say that these guys are playing in a rigged game. And when they play in a rigged game they get arrogant and careless because they aren't used to playing on a level playing field. We can beat these guys.
Here's some more info on Patriot II: Center for Public Integrity -- pdfs available there.
Here's a Mike Ruppert Article "Five to Ten Times Worse Than the Patriot Act"