From: J. R. Molloy (jr@shasta.com)
Date: Thu Sep 06 2001 - 05:46:39 MDT
If you're worried about computers taking over the world, you can relax - for
now.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/134327121_gates08.htm
l
It will be at least a generation before computers can fool people into
thinking the machines are human, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates predicted
yesterday in his keynote speech at a conference of artificial-intelligence
researchers in Seattle.
But Gates is optimistic about the possibilities of intelligent machines,
something that captured his imagination as a youth and is now a top priority
in Microsoft's $5.3 billion research organization.
Computers are already fast enough to see, hear, listen and learn, which is
making them easier to operate and more useful tools, he said.
Building a humanlike computer has taken longer than Gates and other
enthusiasts imagined in the 1960s and 1970s, however. Computers are getting
powerful enough, but writing the software to run a truly intelligent machine
has proved to be tricky.
"They're very tough problems, so 25 years later the dreams are very much the
same," Gates said.
Meanwhile, Microsoft is pursuing artificial-intelligence research that
improves computers' speech recognition, vision, language skills, and abilities
to retrieve and search for information. It's also working on software to
enable machines to learn and continuously improve so, for instance, errors
won't be repeated.
"We're talking about software products that many hundreds of millions, if not
billions, of people will be using and taking advantage of every day," he said.
Gates refrained from making bold predictions about robots and other machines
from science fiction, prototypes of which are on display and playing in a
soccer tournament elsewhere in the Washington State Convention and Trade
Center this week.
A highlight of the conference is the RoboCup competition, in which researchers
field teams of robots in soccer games.
Hundreds of middle- and high-school students also were competing with robots
that manipulated pingpong balls.
Also on display are robots ranging from Sony's mechanical dog, which can
figure out how to stand back up when it falls down, to vacuum-cleaner-size
industrial machines that rolled around the exhibition hall like dumb versions
of Star Wars' R2D2.
Attendees also can see a Boeing-NASA research project on intelligent
flight-control systems, which automatically figure out the best way to fly an
airplane after a component failure.
On a smaller scale, graduate students from Northwestern University are
demonstrating a robot the size of a toilet-paper tube that can move around,
jump over obstacles and transmit video images. Called Scouts, the robots are
being developed with military funding for "urban-policing" duties such as
surveillance.
Eventually Scouts would be fired like grenades into buildings, then find dark
corners from which they would monitor motion.
Although she's developing a tiny robot for the government to spy on people,
Northwestern graduate student Kristen Stubbs said she's more concerned about
how much Gates and Microsoft will limit users' control of their computers with
new software such as the Windows XP operating system.
"There's kind of a fine line between how smart you want your computers to be,
and how much control you have," she said. "I worry about that."
-------------------------------------
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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