Jobs are For Machines

[Baruch]

Don't hold your breath for real AI.  It doesn't exist in humans either ;-)  There is a difference between emulation and simulation.  With simulation, you solve the same problem, but using a different method (Watson).  With emulation, you have to solve the same problem, using the same method.  Metal-ware and meat-ware are not the same method.  If you want to generate an emulation to play chess, you have a child, raise it for 20 years, encourage Jr to be a Chess master ... only to have him give you the middle finger ... so you go back to work creating a new child ...

The presumption is that consciousness is understood ... therefore we can make metalware do the same thing that meatware is doing.  Most people are unconscious of the fact that consciousness is not understood.  In fact most scientists consider the brain to be a simple stimulus/response network of vast complexity ... but they are unable to confirm that.  Description is not the same as explanation.  Mastering vast combinatoric problems, via pattern matching, is not the same thing as consciousness ... it is just chess on steroids.

[_Xenu_]

Nay say all you like, but the ability to learn new skills with correction and use intuition is what makes humans humans. The idea of machines being able to do this both scares and fascinates me.Whether they do this exactly how we do doesn't matter, so long as it gets the same results. If you read the article, a machine recently passed a sort of Turing test in regards to image recognition.

[Baruch]

Nay say all you like, but the ability to learn new skills with correction and use intuition is what makes humans humans. The idea of machines being able to do this both scares and fascinates me.Whether they do this exactly how we do doesn't matter, so long as it gets the same results. If you read the article, a machine recently passed a sort of Turing test in regards to image recognition.

The Turing Test has always been a straw man argument.  Humans learn (sort of) ... software is programmed (by humans).  Now you can partly drive the software with external data ... like sensation in humans ... and you can partly five the software with internal data ... like memory in humans.  Both internal and external data can be changing.  But that in fact is not what learning is, in humans.  That is a very simplified model, that we can use to poorly model what humans are doing ... but it is no more actual learning ... than a ship in a bottle can be sailed by sailors across the ocean.  A model is not the thing itself, the plastic Panzer IV that I built as a child, is not a real Panzer IV.  It is a toy for children.