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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: 2) by VLM on Tuesday June 30 2015, @09:03PM
AC has a valid point but I suspect people will just give up and compete about something else.
I'm old enough that I have good mental math and estimation skills and can often do simple math faster than people can use a computer or calculator IF its simple enough. I kid you not, you get a bill for 5 people for $60.50 and someone starts to pull out their calculator and I instantly tell them that'll be $12.10 and they look at me like I'm F-ing Spock estimating warp speeds and then their mouth drops open when siri finally tells them it's $12.10 like a minute later after much fumbling around. How did you do that? Or I can calculate circuit components in my head and it actually works, and they don't get it that when you buy the bargain basement 10% tolerance resistors or whatever I only need to get to about 10% accuracy in my head, which usually isn't very hard.
In the future if computers get a higher IQ than people, then people will respond just like using hand shovels or basic arithmetic today, they just won't give a shit about it anymore, plus or minus looking at people with natural talent as insane and relying on computers for even the easiest problems.