HabitableZone

Flame » in reply to Dying Inside

I would probably fail a Turing test.

We all knew this was coming, right? At least those of us reading science fiction for most of our lives.

Recently, in the text editor here, Windows has been recommending proper spelling as I type (which I need, honestly,) but also recommending what my next word could be.

Need to find out the toggle for that feature, because Shut Up. I find myself making sure I do not use the recommended word. This is my sentence and I will do with it what I want. That little blue line suggesting a comma can... (waiting to see if the computer suggests "eat shit.")

...

So here we are upon a cusp. And now supermarket or over-the-fence conversations might turn to a discussion of what exactly is intelligence? Flipping through the dictionary to make sure I understand the definitions, connotations, and subtleties of words like cognition, erudition, wisdom, and a whole host of new terminology I must slog though. Reading David Brin's blog lately gives me a headache.

In my own meat space thoughts, these new advances are not intelligent, but they are very good at assembly. Do you remember that show "Junkyard Wars?" They'd have teams of crazy mechanics and tinkers released into a junkyard and tasked with building something. An amphibious car. A trebuchet. Like that. Fun show.

Like the show, these programs are unleashed into a junkyard to solve a challenge. Buckminster Fully said in his book "Synergetics*" (1982), "Human beings are information gathers and problem solvers." Now I'd add to that, as would Bucky, Intuition.

Do these programs have intuition? Do they discern? Do they consider, reflect, experience joy or sorry for their words?

Not yet. Will they ever?

I don't know. But it is going to be interesting to watch it evolve.

*Which is brilliant, by the way. Lots of fun with great circles.

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