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: 2) by Non Sequor on Wednesday July 01 2015, @03:43AM
I know that for me consciousness seems inherently non-material in that I have no clue whatsoever where in the material world my representations of nerve stimuli come from. The Chinese Room problem is just a lengthy statement of this frustration.
Even if I know that the brain is assembled out of cognitive parlor tricks that give the illusion of reasoning, I don't get how the trick of convincing myself that all of this coagulates into a coherent whole can possibly work, and yet it does. Surely there must be some woo hiding somewhere!
Write your congressman. Tell him he sucks.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday July 01 2015, @12:16PM
I know that for me consciousness seems inherently non-material
Contemplate mood and perception altering drugs, legal and otherwise. Also mental changes related to brain surgery or physical brain damage.
(Score: 2) by Non Sequor on Wednesday July 01 2015, @12:54PM
I get that. I know about case studies where functions are disconnected by brain damage from other parts of the brain and function autonomously or with limited coordination with other functions.
I still don't get where it comes together. I don't get where you go from untyped sense data to typed sense data. I know that sense data can be mistyped (synaesthesia and hallucinogens), but I don't get what makes the type seem apparently real.
Write your congressman. Tell him he sucks.