SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Science just took us a small step closer to HAL 9000. A new artificial intelligence (AI) program designed by Chinese researchers has beat humans on a verbal IQ test. Scoring well on the verbal section of the intelligence test has traditionally been a tall order for computers, since words have multiple meanings and complex relationships to one another.
But in a new study, the program did better than its human counterparts who took the test. The findings suggest machines could be one small step closer to approaching the level of human intelligence, the researchers wrote in the study, which was posted earlier this month on the online database arXiv, but has not yet been published in a scientific journal. Don't get too excited just yet: IQ isn't the end-all, be-all measure of intelligence, human or otherwise.
For one thing, the test only measures one kind of intelligence (typically, critics point out, at the expense of others, such as creativity or emotional intelligence. Plus, because some test questions can be hacked using some basic tricks, some AI researchers argue that IQ isn't the best way to measure machine intelligence.
[Paper - PDF]: http://arxiv.org/pdf/1505.07909v2.pdf
Original Submission
(Score: 5, Insightful) by VLM on Tuesday June 30 2015, @08:50PM
The results are somewhat misleading. I read the journalist output and skimmed the paper.
First they didn't really do an IQ test they just dived into some weird game-able vocabulary tests. Its like saying human mathematicians are doomed because the graphics card I threw out today can do more raw FLOPs that any planet of humans working with pen and paper. Sure, thats true, but .... So there exist parts of a conventional IQ test regarding vocabulary that can basically be gamed by linear algebra. Whatever. And the other 99% of the test?
Second they used turkers and thought that they represent humanity. How dumb. What about my friends to do turk drinking games and other people I know who just don't give a F and just want some money while they laze on the couch. Being Chinese they most likely think westerners treat turking just like Asian uni entrance exams aka very seriously. Um, no. I suspect detailed analysis would show most of their turkers were drunk, high, or watching Judge Judy on the TV while randomly making patterns and stuff.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday June 30 2015, @08:53PM
That's starting to become the case:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn25068-wikipediasize-maths-proof-too-big-for-humans-to-check.html [newscientist.com]
The amount of human direction needed to make a math or science (simulated or robotically operated experiment) discovery will gradually decrease.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]