MachineMachine /stream - tagged with turing-test https://machinemachine.net/stream/feed en-us http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss LifePress therourke@gmail.com <![CDATA[Turing Test success marks milestone in computing history]]> http://www.reading.ac.uk/news-and-events/releases/PR583836.aspx

An historic milestone in artificial intelligence set by Alan Turing - the father of modern computer science - has been achieved at an event organised by the University of Reading.

]]>
Sun, 08 Jun 2014 10:11:13 -0700 http://www.reading.ac.uk/news-and-events/releases/PR583836.aspx
<![CDATA[Abject Materialities: An Ontology of Everything on the Face of the Earth]]> http://machinemachine.net/text/ideas/abject-materialities-an-ontology-of-everything-on-the-face-of-the-earth

On the 5th of October I took part in the ASAP/4 ‘Genres of the Present’ Conference at the Royal College of Art. In collusion with Zara Dinnen, Rob Gallagher and Simon Clark, I delivered a paper on The Thing, as part of a panel on contemporary ‘Figures’. Our idea was to perform the exhaustion of the Zombie as a contemporary trope, and then suggest some alternative figures that might usefully replace it. Our nod to the ‘Figure’ was inspired, in part, by this etymological diversion from Bruno Latour’s book, On the Modern Cult of the Factish Gods: To designate the aberration of the coastal Guinea Blacks, and to cover up their own misunderstanding, the Portuguese (very Catholic, explorers, conquerors, and to a certain extent slave traders as well) are thought to have used the adjective feitiço, from feito, the past participle of the Portuguese verb “to do, to make.” As a noun, it means form, figure, configuration, but as an adjective, artificial, fabricated, factitious and finally, enchanted. Right from the start, the word’s etymology refused, like the Blacks, to choose between what is shaped by work and what is artificial; this refusal, this hesitation, induced fascination and brought on spells. (pg. 6)

My paper is a short ‘work-in-progress’, and will eventually make-up a portion of my thesis. It contains elements of words I have splurged here before. The paper is on, or about, The Thing, using the fictional figure as a way to explore possible contradictions inherent in (post)human ontology. This synopsis might clarify/muddy things up further: Coiled up as DNA or proliferating through digital communication networks, nucleotides and electrical on/off signals figure each other in a coding metaphor with no origin. Tracing the evolution of The Thing over its 70 year history in science-fiction (including John W. Campbell’s 1938 novella and John Carpenter’s 1982 film), this paper explores this figure’s most terrifying, absolute other quality: the inability of its matter to err. The Thing re-constitutes the contemporary information paradigm, leaving us with/as an Earthly nature that was always already posthuman. You can read the paper here, or download a PDF, print it out, and pin it up at your next horror/sci-fi/philosophy convention.

]]>
Fri, 19 Oct 2012 06:36:00 -0700 http://machinemachine.net/text/ideas/abject-materialities-an-ontology-of-everything-on-the-face-of-the-earth
<![CDATA[Computer glitch may have led to Deep Blue's historic win over chess champ Kasparov | The Verge]]> http://www.theverge.com/2012/9/29/3426484/computer-glitch-deep-blue-garry-kasparov

Earlier this year, IBM celebrated the 15-year anniversary of its supercomputer Deep Blue beating chess champion Garry Kasparov. According to a new book, however, it may have been an accidental glitch rather than computing firepower that gave Deep Blue the win. At the Washington Post, Brad Plumer high

]]>
Sat, 29 Sep 2012 07:09:00 -0700 http://www.theverge.com/2012/9/29/3426484/computer-glitch-deep-blue-garry-kasparov
<![CDATA[Artificially intelligent game bots pass the Turing test on Turing's centenary]]> http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/09/120926133235.htm

An artificially intelligent virtual gamer created by computer scientists at The University of Texas at Austin has won the BotPrize by convincing a panel of judges that it was more human-like than half the humans it competed against.

The competition was sponsored by 2K Games and was set inside the virtual world of "Unreal Tournament 2004," a first-person shooter video game. The winners were announced this month at the IEEE Conference on Computational Intelligence and Games. "The idea is to evaluate how we can make game bots, which are nonplayer characters (NPCs) controlled by AI algorithms, appear as human as possible," said Risto Miikkulainen, professor of computer science in the College of Natural Sciences. Miikkulainen created the bot, called the UT^2 game bot, with doctoral students Jacob Schrum and Igor Karpov.

]]>
Sat, 29 Sep 2012 04:28:00 -0700 http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/09/120926133235.htm
<![CDATA[The Manifest Destiny of Artificial Intelligence]]> http://www.americanscientist.org/issues/id.15837,y.2012,no.4,content.true,page.1,css.print/issue.aspx

Artificial intelligence began with an ambitious research agenda: To endow machines with some of the traits we value most highly in ourselves—the faculty of reason, skill in solving problems, creativity, the capacity to learn from experience. Early results were promising. Computers were programmed to play checkers and chess, to prove theorems in geometry, to solve analogy puzzles from IQ tests, to recognize letters of the alphabet. Marvin Minsky, one of the pioneers, declared in 1961: “We are on the threshold of an era that will be strongly influenced, and quite possibly dominated, by intelligent problem-solving machines.”

Fifty years later, problem-solving machines are a familiar presence in daily life. Computer programs suggest the best route through cross-town traffic, recommend movies you might like to see, recognize faces in photographs, transcribe your voicemail messages and translate documents from one language to another. As for checkers and chess, computers are not merely good

]]>
Tue, 10 Jul 2012 02:48:00 -0700 http://www.americanscientist.org/issues/id.15837,y.2012,no.4,content.true,page.1,css.print/issue.aspx
<![CDATA[Why Aren't We Reading Turing?]]> http://www.furtherfield.org/features/why-arent-we-reading-turing

It's a testament to Turing's fascination with nearly everything that 76 years since his first major paper, there's still so much to write about his work. Expect this week to offer more events and glimpses into these projects: Neuro-computational studies into the functional basis of cognition. The ever forward march for genuine artificial intelligence. New methods of simulating the complexity of biological forms nearly 60 years after Turing's paper on the chemical basis of morphogenesis (indeed this area of complexity theory is now an established area of major research). The slippery mathematical formalist discoveries which define what can or cannot be computed. And not forgetting key historical developments in cryptography, perhaps the field which Turing is most respected for. Moreover, Turing wasn't just one of the greatest mathematicians of the 20th Century, but also one of the greatest creative engineers; someone who wasn't afraid of putting his ideas into automation, through the ne

]]>
Wed, 27 Jun 2012 15:20:00 -0700 http://www.furtherfield.org/features/why-arent-we-reading-turing
<![CDATA[Artificial Intelligence Could Be on Brink of Passing Turing Test]]> http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/04/turing-test-revisited

“Two revolutionary advances in information technology may bring the Turing test out of retirement,” wrote Robert French, a cognitive scientist at the French National Center for Scientific Research, in an Apr. 12 Science essay. “The first is the ready availability of vast amounts of raw data — from video feeds to complete sound environments, and from casual conversations to technical documents on every conceivable subject. The second is the advent of sophisticated techniques for collecting, organizing, and processing this rich collection of data.”

]]>
Sat, 14 Apr 2012 08:37:53 -0700 http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/04/turing-test-revisited
<![CDATA[Smarter Than You Think - I.B.M.'s Supercomputer]]> http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/20/magazine/20Computer-t.html?hp=&pagewanted=all

For the last three years, I.B.M. scientists have been developing what they expect will be the world’s most advanced “question answering” machine, able to understand a question posed in everyday human elocution — “natural language,” as computer scientists call it — and respond with a precise, factual answer. In other words, it must do more than what search engines like Google and Bing do, which is merely point to a document where you might find the answer. It has to pluck out the correct answer itself. Technologists have long regarded this sort of artificial intelligence as a holy grail, because it would allow machines to converse more naturally with people, letting us ask questions instead of typing keywords. Software firms and university scientists have produced question-answering systems for years, but these have mostly been limited to simply phrased questions. Nobody ever tackled “Jeopardy!” because experts assumed that even for the latest artificial intelligence, the game was simpl

]]>
Thu, 17 Jun 2010 03:31:00 -0700 http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/20/magazine/20Computer-t.html?hp=&pagewanted=all