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Computers Theorized To Gain Consciousness by 2029

posted by Dopefish on Monday February 24 2014, @06:00AM   
from the i-for-one-welcome-our-new-computer-overlords dept.

kef writes:

"By 2029, computers will be able to understand our language, learn from experience and outsmart even the most intelligent humans, according to Google's director of engineering Ray Kurzweil.

Kurzweil says:

Computers are on the threshold of reading and understanding the semantic content of a language, but not quite at human levels. But since they can read a million times more material than humans they can make up for that with quantity. So IBM's Watson is a pretty weak reader on each page, but it read the 200m pages of Wikipedia. And basically what I'm doing at Google is to try to go beyond what Watson could do. To do it at Google scale. Which is to say to have the computer read tens of billions of pages. Watson doesn't understand the implications of what it's reading. It's doing a sort of pattern matching. It doesn't understand that if John sold his red Volvo to Mary that involves a transaction or possession and ownership being transferred. It doesn't understand that kind of information and so we are going to actually encode that, really try to teach it to understand the meaning of what these documents are saying.

Skynet anyone?"

• Re:it always comes down to: Re:it always comes down to: (Score: 5, Interesting) by davester666 on Monday February 24 2014, @07:39AM

  by davester666 (155) on Monday February 24 2014, @07:39AM (#5653)

  Yes, the rich will decide they would rather live forever instead of just handing their wealth to their children. There will be a couple of jobs changing the oil in the machines. The rest of us will be requested to live on some other planet.

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• Re:it always comes down to: Re:it always comes down to: (Score: 2) by mhajicek on Monday February 24 2014, @02:23PM

  by mhajicek (51) on Monday February 24 2014, @02:23PM (#5814)

  Are you kidding? Other planets have valuable resources too, you filthy squatter!

  Fortunately I don't think humans, no matter how wealthy, will be holding the reigns much past 2045. I just hope that whoever programs the driving factors in the hard-takeoff AI does a good job.

  --
  The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek

  Parent

  • Re:it always comes down to: (Score: 1) by Runaway1956 on Monday February 24 2014, @02:28PM

    by Runaway1956 (2926) on Monday February 24 2014, @02:28PM (#5816) Journal

    "holding the reigns"

    I read over that. For some reason, I looked back,and thought, "He misspelled reins." I gave it another second's thought, and wondered if it's a misspelling or not. Hmmmm . . .

    --
    “I have become friends with many school shooters” - Tampon Tim Walz

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• Re:it always comes down to: Re:it always comes down to: (Score: 1) by buswolley on Monday February 24 2014, @06:19PM

  by buswolley (848) on Monday February 24 2014, @06:19PM (#6016)

  Ha ha. The rich will be the first to get lost in the virtual labyrinth.

  --
  subicular junctures

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  • Re:it always comes down to: (Score: 1) by metamonkey on Monday February 24 2014, @08:47PM

    by metamonkey (3174) on Monday February 24 2014, @08:47PM (#6160)

    Maybe if they all escape into the machine, the rest of us can live in the real world in peace. Assuming this is the real world. I honestly have no idea.

    --
    Okay 3, 2, 1, let's jam.

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• Re:it always comes down to: (Score: 1) by soylentsandor on Monday February 24 2014, @06:37PM

  by soylentsandor (309) on Monday February 24 2014, @06:37PM (#6039)

  The rest of us will be requested to live on some other planet.

  Almost, but not quite. "Economic reality" will drive the less fortunate away.

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