Watson, Its ALIVE?

More of our INTEL

Wow, Watson Wins Jeopardy!

IBM’s Deep Blue Defeats Kasparov.

Finally we have a Thinking computer.

In 1966, MIT Joseph Weizenbaum created one of the earliest
natural-language processing programs, called ELIZA.
And every since then Natural language programs have
been interfacing data bases.

In the past I've done a years stint with AI,
artificial intelligence.

The key thing to remember is the first word,
"Artificial" that does not refer to the electronic
Part but to the mimicking of Intelligence.

AI is to real Intelligence
What a card trick is to card playing.
There is NO thought going on.
Deep Blue was a math problem.

Jeopardy was a advanced Google type

search engine.

Neither program hand any plans for what they

would spend the winnings on.

The work I've done in AI was to add

personality to AI, make it feel like

it had a soul and was doing deep 

thinking. 

Surprisingly that was not as hard as

it sounded, Lisa was a remarkable language

program, and then one added tricks.

To fool a person into believing it was real

intelligence or a human they were talking to.

That could be done for a few hours, but after

that it became apparent it was a PC program

one was talking to. 

If the user used the "F" word the program

would inquire if the user was "angry or horny".

Which lead to some long conversations.

Or if the user had a lul in conversation, the program

may ask if "IT the program" would die. Which often

kicked the user into a long exploration of death.

Or asked the user to leave a radio on near it

so the program could feel the vibrations of the

music. That often lead to feelings of affection.

Or asked if there were a God? and the Program

had some firm ideas on who its god was,

Gerald of course, he created the program.

That lead to some complaints. Some users

didn't understand they were being played with

and the program couldn't really think or have real

convictions..

Much of the program could be directed to be

reflective, empathic. Which human intelligence

often regards as 'Smart', and desirable, humans

love to talk about themselves.

Another Trick was to measure user key concepts,

and when two key concepts were identified,

to re-offer them to the user in association.

Sounds simple but the results were often spectacular.

That "spectacularity" was sourced from the users

imagination. As the words were actually meaningless

to the program.

And the "smarter" the user was the more they

read into the programs answers.

Thats not to say the program wasn't good and useful,

I still use it today when I hit wall, and am spent for any

answer, the program will often open a new venue.

But my program and all the other AI programs

are just mimicking thought. A card trick.

And the Jeopardy program may open new ways of

using a computer to pull the exact data we are looking

for from a data base.

I estimate we are a 100 years away from any true

intelligence, and any cognitive entity should have "rights".

The fun never ends.

Gerald

Anthropologist.

Robotoligist? 8>

.