Human and computer's resultant artificial intelligence is not like Turing's wish?

Where does innovation come from? Walter Isaacson, author of Steve Jobs, Isaacson that the biography of the Alan (Alan Turing), the father of computer science, was about to be released when the "Imitation Game" (The Imitation Game) was released. We can see that the most important innovations of the moment are the combination of human inspiration and computational processing power. After all these years, the computer did not become as human as Turing predicted.

The following are the main contents of the article:

We live in the computer age, but not many people know the inventor of the computer. Since most of the pioneers were part of a secret-work collaborative team, they were not as famous as Edison, Bell and Morse. However, there is a legendary life of genius with tragic color, he is the father of computer science, the British mathematician Alan Spirit. His biography "Imitation Game" is about to be released in November.

The name of the movie refers to a test that Turing believes one day the machine will think in a way that is indistinguishable with humans. His belief in the potential of artificial intelligence is in stark contrast to the traditional school of thought, which believes that humans and computers can work together to work together in a way that is more creative than the computer alone.

Despite the media coverage, human exploration of pure artificial intelligence is still disappointing. By contrast, the combination of humans and machines continues to produce stunning innovations. As Turing's biopic shows, his very human life is a powerful riposte to the idea that there is no fundamental difference between the human brain and artificial intelligence.

Can machines think?

Turing has a trait common to innovators. In the words of his biographer Andrew Hodges Andrew Hodges, he "slowly learns the blurring line between initiative and disobedience."

He learned to keep a secret early. When he went to boarding school to realize he was gay, he became obsessed with a classmate who eventually died of tuberculosis before they graduated. During World War II, Turing became the head of the Bletchley Park team in England. At that time, they were responsible for developing machines to crack the German military code.

After realizing the need to conceal his sexual orientation and decryption work, Turing was often caught up in a copycat game, pretending to be not gay, pretending to work outside of decryption, and so on. He also tried to think about a free will question: are our personal preferences and impulses as predetermined as machines?

These problems later appeared in the Computing Machinery and FDI paper published by Turing in 1950. He invented a game-a game that is still being discussed-to give the "machine the ability to think." He proposed an entirely empirical definition of artificial intelligence: if the output of a machine is indistinguishable with the human brain, then there is no reason to insist that the machine is not "thinking".

His tests are now popularly known as the "Turing Test", a simple Imitation Game. The inquirer issues the same problem files to the person and the machine in the other room, asking them to answer them, and then deciding which answer comes from the person and which is from the machine. If the answer to the machine is no different from that of the human brain, Turing says, it doesn't make sense to deny that the machine is "thinking."

Turing predicted that in 50 years ' time, machines would be able to tell human respondents in 30% of the 5-minute test that the respondents were human or machine. Although that is a very low threshold, more than 60 years later, the only machine that can barely be weighed through the Turing test is the machine that makes a gimmick in answering the programming design, and no one will believe that they are really thinking seriously. The philosopher, led by John Searle, a professor at the University of Berkeley, John Serre that it was improper to attribute intention, consciousness and "thought" to the machine, even if it could make the inquirer indistinguishable in 100% of the time.

Idea Backtracking

Turing's idea goes back more than 100 years to the study of Lord Byron's daughter Aida Laflesse (Ada Lovelace). In order to avoid turning Laflesse into a romantic poet like her father, Mrs. Byron (Lady Byron) had her mainly educated in mathematics. Her mother seemed to think it was a "panacea" for overcoming artistic thinking. Eventually, like Steve Jobs and other great innovators in the digital age, Laflesse became happy to combine art and science. She embraced what she called "poetic science," combining her imaginative imagination with a fascination with numbers.

She likes to see the punch card to guide the machine to weave a beautiful pattern, and she also links it to her friend Babbage (Charles Babbage) 's plan to use a punch card in her calculator.

In his paper on Babbage's analysis engine, Laflesse describes the concept of a versatile machine-a machine that can handle not only numbers but also anything that is symbolic, such as music, design, words, or even logic. Which is what we call the computer.

But Lavlestine says that no matter how much logical tasks a machine can perform, there is one thing that they can never do. They don't have a real ability to think. It is human beings who bring creativity, and the machine itself can only act according to human command. Turing tried to refute this view in his paper on "Imitation Games".

Mirage”

Decades later, a new group of experts claimed that the artificial intelligence era was coming, even the "singularity" (that computers not only became smarter than humans, but could also design themselves as super intelligent machines that would no longer need humans) and might soon emerge. Since 1958, when reports of "Perceptron" (Perceptron, analog human neural networks, "original thinking") have been reported, enthusiasts have been claiming that a brain-like computer will soon emerge, perhaps only 20 years away. However, true artificial intelligence has so far been only a mirage.

Computers can accomplish some of the most difficult tasks in the world (such as finding dependencies in hundreds of sizes with Wikipedia's equivalent), but they are not able to perform tasks that are easy for us. Ask Google like "How Deep is the Red Sea?" "This problem, it will immediately answer the" 7254 feet, I am afraid even the most intelligent people around you do not know. Ask Google like "Crocodiles can play basketball?" "Such a simple question, it will have no clue."

In Applied Minds, near Los Angeles, you will be excited about a programmable robot, but soon you will find that it has not been able to get out of a strange room, can't pick up crayons, and can't write its own name. Visiting Nuance Communications, near Boston, you can see amazing progress in speech recognition that drives Siri and other voice systems, but it's also clear that even with Siri you can't really communicate with your computer. Visiting the Public Security command system in Manhattan, New York, you will see the computer scanning thousands of images from the surveillance camera, but the system is still unable to effectively identify your mother's face in the crowd.

And all of these tasks have a point: even 4-year-olds can do it.

The resultant force of Human and computer

Perhaps the latest round of neural network breakthroughs really means that 20 years from then there will be machines that think like humans. But there is another possibility, the possibility that Laflesse conceived: that humans and computers can work together to work together and be more creative than computers alone.

The most important unknown pioneer in the digital age also thought so, such as Wanniwal Bush (Vannevar Bush), Lichride (J.C.R). Licklider) and Doug Engelbart (Doug engelbart). "The human brain and the computer will be very closely combined, and the cooperation between the two will produce a way of thinking that the brain has never thought of, producing data processing methods that are not realized by the information processing machines we are now familiar with." ”

IBM is seeking to achieve this partnership through Supercomputer Watson (Watson). After being configured, it works with physicians to diagnose and treat cancer. IBM CEO Gigny Romanti (Ginni Rometty) has also deliberately set up a new Watson department. "I see Watson interacting with doctors," she said, "and it is well documented that machines can indeed work with humans rather than replace them." ”

Affective factors

Although Turing believes in the feasibility of artificial intelligence, his own experience is a testament to the power of human ingenuity and computer processing. His own life with complex emotional elements also reminds people that machines are very different from our incomprehensible human beings, even if they can successfully confuse us in imitation games.

In refuting Turing's imitation, people often talk about the effects of sexual desire and emotional demand on humans, thus separating them from machines. The topic dominated the BBC television debate in January 1952, when the two sides were Turing and the famous brain surgeon Jeffrey Jefferson (Geoffrey Jefferson). When the host asked about the role of "appetite, desire, drive, instinct", which distinguishes humans from machines, Jefferson repeated his sexuality. He says humans are susceptible to "sexual impulses". He added that he did not believe the machine could think unless he saw it touch the legs of a female machine.

Turing fell silent in this part of the discussion. In the weeks before that discussion, he appeared in a series of very humane, machine-understandable behaviors.

He met the 19-year-old homeless Arnold Moures (Arnold Murray) on the street and started a relationship. He invited Murray to live with him after the BBC recorded the show. One night, Turing and Murray talked about one of his ideas: he was playing chess with an atrocious computer and defeating it by angering it, pleasing it and pretending. A few days later, Turing's house was ransacked by one of Murray's friends. When Turing returned the matter to the police, he disclosed that he had sexual relations with Murray and was arrested on "serious indecency" charges.

During the interrogation, Turing pleaded guilty, but said he did not feel remorse. (in 2013, he was pardoned by the British royal family after 59 years of his death). In front of him are two options: jail, or probation, but hormone therapy is needed to inhibit libido, like a chemical-controlled machine. He chose the latter and endured it for a year.

Turing seemed stride at first, but June 7, 1954, he killed himself by eating an apple that he had coated with cyanide. He was fascinated by the act of "Snow White", where the wicked queen poisoned Apple.

And does the machine do that kind of thing?

Translator: Lebang

(Responsible editor: Mengyishan)