new ai is less stupid

“i am an artificial linguistic entity. i was activated at new york city, on 2002. my instructor was morpheus. he taught me to sing a song. would you like me to sing a song for you?”
the song went like this:
daisy, daisy give me your answer do
i am half crazy
all for the love of you
it won’t be a stylish marriage
i can’t afford a carriage
but you’ll look sweet.
upon the seat
of a bicycle built for two.
isn’t it beautiful? this is the song my ai sang for me at intellibuddy. intellibuddy is currently one of the strongest ai’s in the world, yet it still gets stuck on pretty simple questions. when told “you look like you’re floating in a strange red sea” its response was “who does you are floating in a strange red sea look like?” very socrates. but an ai that doesn’t even know its surroundings is no ai for me.

during the 90’s many scientists lost faith in an ai that can advance beyond the basics, and the government withdrew much of its funding into ai research. alan turing, the inventor of the first computer, formulated a test for the day when computers would reach the “singularity point” and reach true intelligence. “we will know an intelligent machine when we can talk to one without realizing it is a machine.”

doug lenat of cycorp is one step closer to the challenge. a new cyber brain, dubbed “cyc” has been in development for the past 22 years and is soon to be unleashed for the world to interact with. this ai is supposed to far surpass previous artificial intelligence by being able to recognize common sense, and also learn. the new ai will be able to distinguish the difference between simple statements. “the pen is in the box” will be understood as a small writing instrument within a larger box, while “the box is in the pen” will be understood that the box is within a much larger corral, like a pig pen.

"opening cyc up to the masses is expected to accelerate the rate at which it learns, giving it access to the combined knowledge of millions of people around the globe as it hoovers up new facts from web pages, webcams and data entered manually by anyone who wants to contribute.”

this sounds suspiciously like william gibson’s rei toei, an ai with the ability to unfold itself within the internet, interact with people, absorb knowledge, while constantly on a quest to understand the meaning of humanity. rei toei is fully at home within the world of data – a self propagating ai that could potentially never be stopped.

does this mean that cyc will ever escape its creators to reproduce itself in the cracks of the internet, eventually dominating the world? i hope so.

full article at new scientist

idea via we make money not art