Science Fact: The Machine
Despite a recognition that there is a fair share of hype, science fiction is quickly becoming science fact ever so swiftly.
“Within five years the actual design of these things will be understood by just a few hundred people.” – Yousef Khalidi, distinguished engineer at Microsoft
More than five years ago it was announced that a computer has finally passed the Turing Test 64 years after it was proposed.
This test is designed to gauge whether a computer can pass as human by conversing with a series of real humans in text-based chats so that the humans are none the wiser that the intelligence on the other end is in fact artificial.
A fictionalized pass of the Turing Test was awarded in the British attempt from some years ago to create the quintessential dystopian A.I. run-amok film The Machine.
But only one year after the release of this film – incidentally much more plausible than the contemporary Johnny Depp-stinker Transcendence, the Turing Test has indeed been passed: in reality.
Siri, Google Now, Cortana, all attempts at a human serving A.I. by the big 3 respectively: Apple, Google, and Microsoft, will surely advance and learn as we go.
And now with Facebook’s new AI Research SuperCluster supercomputer soon to go online we are all gonna be further walloped by the so-called ghost in the machine.
So while the hype of a computer that can fool human judges as to its own humanity is – yes – still a bit overblown, for the supposed human is presented as a 13 year old foreigner—not exactly an Einstein—how long until the rest of The Machine is also no longer science fiction but, actually, science fact?