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[Doctor Syntax]

If they did, they'd never hit [deadline|pub].

Just helping things along.

[stiine]

That's what Vodka & orange juice are for

You've obviously never read any of alcoholic Lewis Grizzard's books, specifically the one describing his early life covering sports for a newspaper (remember those?).

[mr-slappy]

Surely [deadline&pub] ?

[Anonymous Custard]

So how about we leave the robo-journalists to write stuff for the robo-commentards and content aggregators to vents their robo-spleens over, whilst the rest of us meatsacks just retire down the pub for a swift pint or six?

Who says there's no positives in progress?

[I ain't Spartacus]

This however leads inevitably to the Electric Monk. Which we get to believe all the things we should be believing, but are too busy. But what disaster could befall if said Electric Monk were to go wrong, and start believing everything it saw on the internet?

[Roger Kynaston]

Electric Monk

Would said monk shoot off at some software mogul? Will this be the Zucks end?

+1 for the Holistic reference.

[Doctor Syntax]

"if said Electric Monk were to go wrong, and start believing everything it saw on the internet?"

How do Electric Monks handle schizophrenia?

[The Oncoming Scorn]

Badly one presumes.

[stiine]

The later models had the ability to hold several conflcting opitions without experiencing memory errors.

[JulieM]

Let's just say that its cooling system would be thoroughly tested.

[cosmogoblin]

This reminds me of a short story I never got round to writing.

An MI6 spy attends a Bond-style gala event (dickie bow, Ferrero Rocher etc) to spy on the Russian diplomat. The diplomat turns out to be a spy themselves, spying on the French ambassador - who turns out ... long story short, the entire event was set up by spies to gather intel from real people, but due to paranoia-fueled coincidence, every single attendee is a spy and doesn't have the knowledge they're gunning for anyway.

Last scene: an exasperated spy shouts "Is anybody here NOT a spy?" When they realise the truth, they all get pissed together and invent ridiculous secrets to tell their superiors.

Copyright notice: Please write this, as I'll never get round to it, and I want to read it!

[Robert Carnegie]

Precedent

Have you seen anything of "The Man Who Was Thursday"?

I think it also appeared in a Private Eye cartoon and possibly real life - the subversive group whose members were ALL policemen assigned to investigate the subversive group.

[STOP_FORTH]

Re: Precedent

Don't write this, just go and read "Indecent Exposure" by Tom Sharpe (follow up to "Riotous Assembly" - also very good.) The entire anarchist group is composed of secret policemen spying on each other and blowing up all of the town infrastructure.

The story is much more complicated than I have described, and very funny. I still smile about the exploding ostriches. Which brings me neatly back to my first ever post on this forum!

[Fruit and Nutcase]

Bond-style gala event

Looks like these two are heading off to such an event

[Daedalus]

As seen in the movie "The President's Analyst" where James Coburn stages a scene to draw out the spy at an event and finds everybody pulling out a gun/blowpipe/poison dart.

[Anonymous Coward]

Dabbs has been told right

Most people do just speak in a mixture of idioms and clichés. That's why, in order to get artificial intelligence, you must first get artificial stupidity.

[Anonymous Custard]

Re: Dabbs has been told right

Why do we need artificial stupidity when there's such an excess of real stupidity around?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Dabbs has been told right

Because we are trying to get artificial intelligence, and real stupidity won't get us there.

[Flocke Kroes]

Re: Are you sure real stupidity get us there

Alan Turing thought it would be difficult to make a machine that could pass a Turing test but ELIZA did just fine in the '60s because the vast majority of testers did not know how to exploit AIs' weaknesses. The key to making money from AI is not faster computers or better software but a steady supply of rich and powerful idiots. Truly we are entering the golden age of AI.

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: Are you sure real stupidity get us there

Jerry Pournelle said it didn't do well with real-world problems such as losing your luggage at the airport.

[veti]

Re: Are you sure real stupidity get us there

Unfortunately, a failure to resist the blandishments of AI is a trait that will select strongly and quickly against both the characteristics "rich" and "powerful".

Each scam, aimed at such people, will only work once. If you want to go on milking it repeatedly, you have to target the only-mildly-rich and hardly-at-all powerful. See Bitcoin, for example.

[jake]

Re: Are you sure real stupidity get us there

Just to be sure nobody gets the wrong idea, ELIZA did not "pass the Turing test" (whatever that means). Rather, ELIZA was one of the first programs supposedly capable of taking the Turing test.

If you have a copy of EMACS handy and would like to see ELIZA in action (in her DOCTOR persona), fire up EMACS and type M-x doctor ...

[Mage]

Re: ELIZA did not "pass the Turing test"

Eliza did for untrained people. Lots of people thought it was real.

Anyway, the "Turing test" isn't at all a measure of AI and I'm not convinced Alan Turing thought it was. It was the idea that a well designed chat program might fool people into thinking the other teletype had a human at the keyboard.

[Michael Wojcik]

Re: ELIZA did not "pass the Turing test"

the "Turing test" isn't at all a measure of AI and I'm not convinced Alan Turing thought it was

The Turing Test, aka Imitation Game, is a philosophical thought experiment which Turing presented as an argument for a pragmatic - as opposed to logical-positivist, essentialist, metaphysical, etc - philosophy of mind, and in particular as a pragmatic argument for the possibility of a mechanical mind.

So, no, it wasn't intended to serve as an actual test procedure. For one thing, it's too methodologically vague (how long does the test last? how many human judges are involved? what are their competences? are they instructed about the nature of the test?). Robert French and others have explained at some length why Turing-test exercises, while they might be interesting for other reasons, don't say anything useful about strong artificial intelligence, the possibility of machine cognition, and so on.

[Mage]

Re: Are you sure real stupidity get us there

I'm not sure that the Touring test idea wasn't a suggestion that AI could be eventually "faked" even if it wasn't possible. I think inspired by a parlour game?

"The Diamond Age" attempts to show that there can be faked AI, but not real AI.

I'll believe there is real AI when a spelling check and grammar check of a novel actually works without:

1) Having to reject many of the suggest corrections.

2) Doesn't leave hundreds of simple mistakes easily spotted by a human proofreader.

I'm not even talking about "real" grammar correction, rewriting such as reversing clauses of a sentence to remove a comma or conjunction etc and improve readability.

We have gone backwards with the adoption of brute force "Rosetta stone" type solutions and so called training with sample data (which may be selected with a bias) instead of actually trying to translate our understanding to algorithms. It might be impossible as many animals can have a large vocabulary (Parrots, crows, sign language and calls in primates, dolphins etc) but don't seem to have language (the ability to communicate entirely new ideas using the existing vocabulary).

The latest chatbots only better Eliza by having a bigger vocabulary and some more rules. They are still useless.

I envisaged a chatbot able to clarify what you want to search the internet for by engaging in conversation to better define the search. It seems impossible. Siri, Cortana, Ok Google and Alexa are basically simple speech matching (not real recognition) creating a text search. They are a pathetic waste of time compared to a keyboard. Apart from the privacy issues.

[Semtex451]

Re: Dabbs has been told right

I thought that's what sports hacks were doing all along, albeit in English, now I discover its the templates.

To extend the theory we just need to put together some templates in any chosen language and we can both sound like a local, and get international work as sports hacks to pay for the trips.

[Franco]

Re: Dabbs has been told right

First we need to teach computers (and indeed people) that the difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has it's limits.

Popularly credited to Einstein, but more probably first written by Alexandre Dumas (son of the one who wrote The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo) according to Quote Investigator.

https://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/07/28/genius/

[DJV]

Re: Dabbs has been told right

And genius probably(?) knows the difference between "it's" and "its".

[Franco]

Re: Dabbs has been told right

If you want to be a proper grammar pedant don't start a sentence with a conjunction.

[JassMan]

Re: Dabbs has been told right

Can't have faux grammar pedants giving the real ones a bad name!

[Pascal Monett]

"don't start a sentence with a conjunction"

Indeed, that is something up with which we shall not put !

[matthewdjb]

Re: "don't start a sentence with a conjunction"

That's ending a sentence with a preposition

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Dabbs has been told right

I once worked with a guy who had a double First in English from Cambridge and was a successful author of detective novels under more that one pseudonym. His father had been head of a major Public school.

He couldn't spell, when he wrote he more or less just drew the shape of words. And he would tell anybody interested that English doesn't have grammar in the Latin sense, just usage.

"Not starting sentences with a conjunction" is pure Latin teacher bullshit. If it was good enough for the translators of the Bible, it should be good enough for us.

[cosmogoblin]

Re: Dabbs has been told right

But its good enough for the bible!!!11

[jake]

Re: Dabbs has been told right

A true geniu's probably wouldnt care about extra or missing apostrophe's, as long as the point being communicated was obviou's.

[STOP_FORTH]

Re: Dabbs has been told right

That's why greengrocers are so clever!

[Michael H.F. Wilkinson]

Re: Dabbs has been told right

Or tobacconists, for that matter: "I will not buy this record, it is scratched!"

I had better be going

[STOP_FORTH]

Re: Dabbs has been told right

Fabulous clip, pretty sure I watched this when originally shown. How few cars there were in London in the early Seventies!

[jake]

Re: Dabbs has been told right

London? That's nearly in Acton!

[John Presland]

Re: Dabbs has been told right

Predictive text doesn't.

[Chris G]

Re: Dabbs has been told right

There are languages with vocabularies of less than 500 words which seems to be the general direction of English in some quarters; that would make 'AI' journalism a doddle.

Aside from that did anyone else read "Nigerian probate lawyers" as Nigerian prostate lawyers?

I know lawyers like to specialise but......

[Andytug]

Re: Dabbs has been told right

Apparently they're really good at asking probing questions......

[Ken Shabby]

Re: Dabbs has been told right

and making your eyes water.

[Olivier2553]

Re: Dabbs has been told right

Speaking of prostate, heard this morning on a French radio: What hurts the most in colonoscopy is the clap board.

[Alistair Dabbs]

Re: Dabbs has been told right

It's a big ask.

[STOP_FORTH]

Re: Dabbs has been told right

Es regnet immer in England, nein?

[Crisp]

Re: Most people do just speak in a mixture of idioms and clichés.

There's no closing that can of worms after the horse has bolted.

[A. Coatsworth]

Re: Most people do just speak in a mixture of idioms and clichés.

A bird in hand is worth any amount of beating about the bush, and the proof of the pudding is in breaking the eggs, so Dabbsy will have to try his theory live, and see how it goes...

[CrazyOldCatMan]

Re: Most people do just speak in a mixture of idioms and clichés.

Dabbsy will have to try his theory live

And run it up the bargepole to see which of the ducks salutes?

Sounds like a forwardly-progressive set to expected optimum outcomes to me.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Most people do just speak in a mixture of idioms and clichés.

He's been trying it out on Register Readers for years......