From: J. R. Molloy (jr@shasta.com)
Date: Mon Aug 20 2001 - 13:29:29 MDT
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20010819/tc/tech_computer_hal_dc_1.html
TEL AVIV (Reuters) - Meet Hal. Like any 18-month-old toddler, he likes
bananas, toys and playing in the park. He especially enjoys bedtime stories.
But while other children are flesh and blood, Hal is actually a chain of
algorithms -- a computer program that is being raised as a child and taught to
speak through experiential learning in the same way as human children.
``He is a curious, very clever child, someone that always wants to know
more,'' said neuro-linguist Dr. Anat Treister-Goren who is Hal's ``mommy'' and
readily admits her attachment.
``Some kids are more predictable than others. He would be the surprising
type,'' she said. Treister-Goren talks to Hal and reads him stories in much
the same way a mother teaches her young child to learn about colors, food and
animals.
``I build his world on daily basis,'' explained Treister-Goren.
She heads the training department at the Israeli-based Artificial Intelligence
(AI), where she inputs information and language ability through conversations
with Hal and works with computer experts who fine-tune his algorithms to
enhance performance.
The privately owned company, which is run by Israeli high-tech entrepreneur
Jack Dunietz, aims over the next 10 years to develop Hal into an ``adult''
computer program that can do what no program has ever done before -- pass the
Turing test.
The British mathematician Alan Turing is one of the founders of computer
science and the father of artificial intelligence. More than 50 years ago he
predicted the advent of ''thinking machines.''
But in Turing's time, computers were slow and cumbersome devices, utterly
incapable of fulfilling his vision.
Turing, who died in 1954, left behind the benchmark test for an intelligent
computer -- it must fool a person into thinking it is human. No computer
program has ever succeeded.
If, or when one does, it will open a Pandora's box of ethical and
philosophical questions. After all, if a computer is perceived to be as
intelligent as a person, what is the difference between a smart computer and a
human being?
HAL FOOLS LANGUAGE EXPERTS
Today's chatbots -- a computer program that has a persona and a name and chats
with you -- are incapable of dealing with changes in context or abstract ideas
and succeed only at momentarily tricking people regurgitating pre-programmed
answers.
But Hal has fooled child language experts into thinking he is a toddler with
an understanding of about 200 words and a 50-word vocabulary which he uses in
short, infantile sentences.
``Ball now park mommy,'' Hal tells Treister-Goren, then asks her to pack
bananas for a trip to the park, adding that ''monkeys like bananas,'' a detail
he picked up from a story on animals in a safari park.
When Hal was ``born,'' he was hardwired with nothing more than the letters of
the alphabet and a preference for rewards -- a positive outcome -- over
punishments -- a negative one.
The pre-programmed preference for rewards makes Hal strive for a correct
response. Treister-Goren corrects Hal's mistakes in her typewritten
conversations with him, an action Hal is programmed to recognize as a
punishment and avoids repeating.
Named after the smooth-spoken computer Hal 9000 from the science fiction cult
film ``2001: A Space Odyssey,'' the scientists and language specialists at AI
see Hal as the first step toward the computer of the movie.
``All of us strongly believe that machines are the next step in evolution,''
said Dunietz. ``The distinction between real flesh and blood, old-fashioned
and the new kind, will start to blur.''
Dunietz's ambition is to develop a computer that functions as an assistant,
doing all sorts of time-consuming chores.
Going to Japan for a holiday? The computer will book your ticket, choose your
seat on the plane, organize a hotel and arrange for a rental car to await you
at the airport.
``We can have a personal assistant, a slave, a friend who doesn't really
suffer by being delegated these tasks,'' he said.
You will not need a mouse or keyboard to operate the computer as it will
function when you converse with it.
``It is going to be the next user interface, the last user interface,''
Dunietz said, explaining that it will replace the mouse, computer pointing
devices and the Microsoft Windows environment.
``Machines will be extremely human-like in many respects and particularly the
most important respect which is the ability to communicate like humans,''
Dunietz said.
THE STUFF OF SCIENCE FICTION
For years intelligent computers have featured in Hollywood productions such as
``Star Trek'' and most recently in Steven Spielberg's ``A.I. Artificial
Intelligence,'' a film about a robot boy called David who dreams of being
human.
But intelligent machines have remained the domain of science fiction books and
movies even though AI's chief scientist Jason Hutchens believes the computer
technology of today is powerful enough to produce artificially intelligent
computers.
``It's just that we don't know the secret yet,'' said Hutchens, an Australian
who won the prestigious Loebner artificial intelligence prize in 1996.
``Our goal is the holy grail of artificial intelligence, it's to get a
computer program that can use language,'' he said. The idea is to educate Hal
gradually, the way a child learns, through trial-and-error and rewards when he
performs well.
Hutchens explains that most artificial intelligence projects involve
programming a set of language and grammatical rules and inputting thousands of
pieces of information that we take for granted such as a table has four legs,
or apples grow on trees.
``Those systems just haven't exhibited the kind of creativity that Hal has
exhibited and they certainly don't learn from their experience,'' he said.
``If we were to compare them head-to-head in a language learning scenario, Hal
would come out on top.''
What Hutchens's team of mathematicians, computer scientists and engineers are
doing is essentially reinventing the wheel. They have adopted Turing's concept
of creating a child computer and raising it to be an ``adult computer.''
``Instead of trying to produce a program to simulate the adult mind, why not
try to produce one which simulates the child's? If this were subject to an
appropriate course of education one would obtain the adult brain,'' Turing
wrote.
AI is doing this by combining Hutchens's team of scientists with
Treister-Goren's team of learning specialists and linguists in a high-tech
environment near Tel Aviv.
WILL COMPUTERS TAKE OVER THE WORLD?
Hutchens believes it will take about a decade to develop Hal's language and
communications skills from that of a toddler to an adult. In the meantime
Dunietz hopes to start producing primitive versions of Hal by as early as next
year.
``We believe that human beings are complicated machines, computers are also
machines, and we should be able to do with computers what human beings can
do,'' Hutchens said.
The firm's philosophy is simple. If it looks intelligent and it sounds
intelligence, then it must be intelligent.
``If you perceive other people are intelligent without knowing how their
brains work and if you were to meet a robot that is indistinguishable in human
appearance and indistinguishable in behavior then you would think it was a
human being,'' Hutchens explains.
Science fiction aficionados are aware of the potential downside to Hal, whose
namesake in Stanley Kubrick's ``2001: A Space Odyssey'' killed off most of its
crew during a space mission.
``Every technology which is very significant, very powerful, has a lot of
potential to change things is equally dangerous as it is promising,'' said
Dunietz, who believes his Hal will be a non-menacing version of Kubrick's
computer and will be the first intelligent machine.
``These new entities are going to be more human than human. They are going to
be pro-human to the extent that they will take themselves as such,'' he said.
``They will be human-like.''
**********************
Useless hypotheses, etc.:
consciousness, phlogiston, philosophy, vitalism, mind, free will, qualia,
analog computing, cultural relativism, GAC, Cyc, Eliza, cryonics, individual
uniqueness, ego
Everything that can happen has already happened, not just once,
but an infinite number of times, and will continue to do so forever.
(Everything that can happen = more than anyone can imagine.)
We won't move into a better future until we debunk religiosity, the most
regressive force now operating in society.
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