Wednesday, July 11, 2012

'Tain't Computin' A Tall!

Computers can hold more data and access it more quickly than human brains can, but that doesn't mean they're smarter, or even that they know how to think yet. The computer Watson won when it played two really smart people on Jeopardy, but it answered, "What is Toronto?" when the clue in the category "U.S. Cities" was "Its largest airport is named for a World War II hero, and its 2nd largest is named for a World War II battle." The answer is Chicago, and Toronto isn't even a U.S. city.

This article at the online magazine n+1 goes into some detail about how computers are dumb when you measure them by standards other than amassing data and searching it at blazing speeds. The author, David Auerbach, points out that computers won't really "understand" us until they can handle ambiguity. Computer scientist Kees Van Deemter spends much of his book Not Exactly exploring that problem.

It means we won't have Skynet or the Deus Ex Machina to deal with anytime soon, but it also means that as we adjust our lives to better match what computers do understand, we'll eventually get to be as dumb as they are.

This may already be happening, as it seems a number of people I've met over the course of my life are about as bright as Windows Vista.

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