Computing Machinery and Intelligence: the imitation game

     In this artitical, Doctor Turning explored the question "Can machines think?" through a game called "imitation game". The game is played by three people, a man(A), a woman(B) ,and an interrogator(C).C is separated from A and B, its task is to tell who is A(the man) and who is B through asking questions and analyze the answers. A is supposed to trick C to make the wrong judgement(e.g, "I‘m wearing ear studs")and B is supposed to help C make the right judgement and avoid A's traps("Don't listen to him! he's lying!").But of course, since C does not who is A and who is B, so C can't really tell who's trying to trick it and who's helping it.(Turning provided more details and experimental conditions, I didn't list them all here).

   The purpose of this game is to see when facing such a condition(which means pure logic won't help very much here), how would a robot "think" and analyze the situation in order to get the right answer? Turning did not give any specific result on this imitation game, instead , he's just trying to materialize the way of "thinking" of a robot into a controllable experiment situation so people can have more ground to base when think over this kind of question.

   He also mentioned another situation, that is a robot who participates in the game  is supposed to trick its interrogator into believing  it's a human; while a human who also participates in this game, tries to trick the interrogator into believing that he/she is a robot.The result, however, is not very favourable to human. For example, when an interrogating question like"please multiply 34957 to 23457" is given, a robot can still pretend to be a human by pausing for a while, pretending that it is calculating on a piece of paper, or simply by answering:"I don't have a pencil and paper with me, I can't do this calculation" while a human would immediately get revealed since a robot is supposed to give out an answer in a split second,but a human just can't.

   Turning agrees that a robot might not do very well on test like"what do you think of Shakespeare?". They may give out some very limited and rigid answers. But Turning believes that "the criticism that a machine cannot have much diversity of behavior is just a way of saying that it cannot have much storage capacity.Until fairly recently a storage capacity of even a thousand digits was very rare." He agrees that the way a robot functions is certainly not the same as the nervous system; but "by observing the results fo its own behavior it can modify its own programs so as to achieve some purpose more effectively." So the ideas that one day people might not be able to differentiate a robot from a human in the imitation game or in other fields "are possibilities of the near future, rather than Utopian dreams."

(note: Turning has written a complete and detailed essay on this topic, the points I mentioned here is only part of his research.) 

Main source:

Turning, Alan Mathison. Ed.Luger, George F. Computation and Intelligence: Collected Readings. 

   Menlo Park/Cambridge/London/AAAI Press/ The MIT Press, 1995.

 

More on AI: Can we reach the technological singularity

Related Articles:

http://science.howstuffworks.com/robot-computer-conscious.htm

http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/gadgets/high-tech-gadgets/technological-singularity1.htm

http://ase.tufts.edu/cogstud/papers/concrobt.htm

       The term/notion "singularity"(in technological field) is coined by Vernor Vinge, a former professor of mathematics at the San Diego State University. His basic idea is that the technology is developing at such a dazzling speed,towards an irreversible destiny and one day we might merge together with our AI companies and evolve into a new species---or even worse,our AI companies might evolve into robots with self-awareness and decide that human beings are redundant or unwanted...Such a scenario has been accepted by many people and reflected in many novels and movies,and based on the theory that the data density of an integrated circuit could double every 18 months,this hypothesis is quite "reliable". 

       However,some engineers and scientists have questioned this hypothesis through the limit of circuitry itself. Till today, we can already build microprocessors with transistors that only 45-nanometers wide("a human hair can have a diameter of up to 180,000 nanometers"),but to continue with this trend and to make more and more delicate and complex circuitry(which means to make computer smaller, faster, more powerful, and finally achieve the capacity of human brain),we would soon get into the field of quantum physics, and then face the problem of quantum tunneling(which means "electrons can pass through extremely thin material as if the material weren't there " and we would lose control of them).From this point of view, the potential would have already" ran out" before a computer can achieve such complex capacity as "self-awareness".But they also admit, there are more than one way to build circuits and chips, and the potential technologies like optics and nanotechnology are also developing very fast.We are still uncertain about what could happen in the far future.

     

    

Rise of the Robots--The Future of Artificial Intelligence :How far is it?

Artical URL: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=rise-of-the-robots

(I love this article! Very easy and clear and fit perfectly with my topic.Too bad  we are not going to discuss this on Discussion Board.)

       I've read many articles that explore the future and power of robot from  moral and ethic perspectives, but this one uses concrete data and scientific evidence to evaluate its future and potential; and allows people to have a very clear concept about how it is possible for the chip of a robot to achieve the power of a human brain('Can Hardware Simulate Wetware?'): 

   Level one: 10 MIPS(one million instructions per second) insectlike robot: would be able to track landmarks but can get confused very easily.

   Level two:100,000MIPS mouselike robot: Could be trainable; can improve their work by collecting and analyzing previous data.

   Level three: 5,000,000 MIPS monkeylike robot: can "learn a skill by imitation and afford a kind of consciousness"; can answer simple questions like "why there are candles on the table?"

   Level four: 100million MIPS humanlike robot: "will be able to abstract and generalize"

         However, there are still two problems here. First, the method he used to calculate the capacity of human brain and convert it into measurable unit like MIPS is questionable("The entire human brain is about 75,000 times heavier than the 0.02 gram of processing circuitry in the retina, which implies that it would take, in round numbers,100 million MIPS to emulate the 1,500-gram human brain."). This method works technologically, but in fact our brain's power is way much complexer than this and it can  vary greatly from person to person. For example, how do you decide which person has larger MIPS? Picasso or Kandinsky? Newton or Shakespear? J.K Rowling or Dan Brown? Human brain's diversity, creativity and uniqueness are simply immeasurable(I'm not saying this method is wrong, I'm just saying it's not precise and inclusive enough).
        The second problem is the optimistic attitude towards highly-intelligent humanlike robot: "In that case, mass-produced, fully educated robot scientists working diligently,cheaply,rapidly and increasingly effectively will ensure that most of what science knows in 2050 will have been discovered by our artificial progeny!"

However, there's a paradoxical situation here: if the robots are not as clever and 'conscious' as human being, then there's no obvious breakthrough in this field and most of the jobs still need to be done by ourself; if the robots are indeed as clever and 'conscious' as human being, are they still willing to serve us and obey us, instead of trying to enjoy their own 'life'?

Flattened&merged layers theory as a new way to see the world around us

       
         People have been exploring the ways of seeing and defining the world around us in many ways and methods;in here, I have also come up with two ways. They look exactly the same from appearance but totally different from essence.(By the way, same rule can be applied to both human and robot(if they are clever enough to realize and consider such a question),since no matter how" 3-D" a scene it is, it would be converted to 2-D image when we perceive it)

         First, the way that we all take for granted and is thought as "objective" and true: the mutiple layers way of existence: everything in this world has its own timeline and space; they interact with each other and can exert their influence on each other; but they are also exist as independent individiauls,like Figure 1 showed below:

        Rock,snail,bat,bamboo...they  all live and die on their own timeline, and together their existence has created an objective, continuous, unbreakable world that does not rely on our own mind or vision.

        However, there's another way of seeing this world; in this world,everything is "merged" together and the multiple layers are flattened as one(And of course it looks still the same, since no matter how "3-D" an object looks like, it would still be converted to a 2-D image on our retina), as Figure 2 showed below:

       And in this way of seeing ,we could claim that the world is only an invention of our mind,since everything is on the same layer, and the whole world is just a huge panorama that could be considered as the invention of our own mind; thus we could argue that the whole world would simply disappear if we close our eyes. Gosh, isn't that amazing! We could turn the world upside down and deny the objective existence of others simply by switching the status of our mind!

Artificial Intelligence and Moral Dilemmas& an upgraded version of trolley problem

Link for the article: 

http://enterpriseresilienceblog.typepad.com/enterprise_resilience_man/2012/06/artificial-intelligence-and-moral-dilemmas.html

     I think this article has posted two very innovative problems concerning artificial intelligence.

   1: We are talking about is it possible for machines to have sentience and to what extend it could resemble a human all the time,but this article has raised the question that if such a situation had become truth, should we treat it as the dawn of a new intelligent species and give the "autonomous sentient being" some rights?

   2:People are contending about the ethical aspect about robots having sentience, since sentience is somehow a privilege for human; but this article have presented the opinion that "the greatest danger posed by AI is its lack of sentience rather than the presence of it."

    I believe it's impossible to find a optimal notch on the "moral ability" of robots, since consciousless robots can also be used to carry out good deeds or bad deeds(same as real people in this world), thus the moral power here is holding in the hand of human; an autonomous robot can also make good or bad decisions, same as we have good people and bad people in this world.And the proclivity of being a "good" robot or a "bad" robot still has a big relevance with the intention of its human designer/master, since an autonomous robot does not grow out from a bunch of random wires,chips and circus.

    This article has also brought up the famous trolley problem as an example of the moral dilemma that an AI robot would likely to face:

"The problem involves a trolley running out of control down a track. Five people are tied to the track in its path. Fortunately, you can flip a switch, which will send the trolley down a different track to safety. But, there is a single person tied to that track. Should you flip the switch? "

     This is a good hypothesis,but for me it is still a relatively easy one.It has a strong laboratory taste(does not include the possibility of 'hyper-complexity' in real world), the contrast is too obvious(1:5) and the control groups are under the same circumstance( both tied on the track).Now let's upgrade it to a different,more real-life like situation:

       There are two tracks , track A is still in use and with a large warning sign says" DANGER!DO NOT APPROACH" and there are two kids playing on it; track B has fallen into desuetude for years, and there's one kid playing on it. Now your trolley has gone out of control, which track should you choose?

       In this version, the situation is more complex and does a better job to resemble the things happening in real life. First,the contrast between control groups is narrowed from 1:5 to 1:2, which means this is a more subtle situation and the ground of quantity you are provided to make your final decision is 'thinner'; Second, since the control groups are under different situations(two different track conditions),the thin line between right and wrong is further smudged : should you let your trolley rushes down the track that still in use and has warning signs and crush the two kids playing on it; or should  you switch the flip and send your trolley down  track B, crushing the one kid who has made the right choice of playing on a desuetude track and let him/her sacrifice for the fault of the other two kids? There's really no right decision  here and I'm not gonna answer it. I feel  part of the advantage about autonomous robots is that they can always come up with a decision( if it is programmed properly) on such dilemmas and the moral responsibility of human is relieved.

#5 a clarification of a comment from 'The flight from conversation

     We have different attitudes toward different comments during the class discussion on the article, but there's one artical that we all agreed as "shallow","arrogant", "ostentatious". I somehow feel these judgements are unfair for the person, and I know that sometimes truth is miles away from what it appears to be.So I think it's necessary to clarify it a little bit,and use this as an example to show that it is both hard for us or robot to understand each other; and also to corroborate McCloud's view:"we all live in a profound isolation. No other human being can ever know what it's like to be you from the inside.". I also want to use this as an example tp show that how important the "logical skill" of writing and expressing can be in human life. Below is the comment cited by Christine Coppola:

• Jonathan Wolfson
• New York

The reason people always wear headphones is because there is a tantalizing amount of things to listen to. Spotify allows listening to millions of songs. Awesome podcasts. Millennia of YouTube videos. How can we not be always listening to what is there? The only way I would prefer to converse with a human is if he or she justifies it. But if the nature of the conversation is shallow, irritating, full of yawns, redundant, or spammy, listening to what's playing in the cloud is more worth my time. People have to justify themselves by being more interesting and worth listening to than what I can get through my headphones.

     Judging merely from the content, this is indeed this kind of angry, self-centered, cynical youth that who considers people around him as ignorant and boring, and who doesn't give a shit about conversation etiquette.But, is it really the truth? Sure, indeed, he could be an annoying person that has several traits listed above, but for most of the time, truth is really not like that.

     I know several people like this, who go extremes in comments, write very angry articles and use furious words when express their views. At first I do tend to hate this kind of person,for who the hell do they think they are? But when I get to know them, I realize that most of them are actually very sensitive, timid, lonely and warmhearted.They are more than willing to help when you ask them a favor,and they would try very hard to solve your problem.It is almost like they are yelling to the world that "you see?! I'm not an unwanted, I'm not a ne'er-do-well! I'm useful, I'm needed! I can also make other people feel happier through my own efforts!" I used to meet a girl during high school,who acts very coldly and seems to disdain everything,always make extreme and arrogant like the example I used here. Almost all the students hate her, me included.And she doesn't seem to give a damn about others, come and go freely all the time. I somehow got to know her under a pure coincidence( I won't detail everything here, it's a long story, and not interesting or romantic at all) and discovered that she's the most innocent,candid, humorous and nice person I've never met in my life...

    Then some people may ask, well,since you claim that some of them are very nice in nature,then why should they act in this way and bring people around to hate them? I just want to say three words to whoever would ask such a question, that 'you are lucky'.You are a happy, normal person for whom the problem of getting involved in social relationship does not disturbe you at all.There are all kinds of people in this world,some are just happier and more comfortable than others while some are doomed to be loners and feel awkward.Such a quality works the same way as talents on painting or music,and for those people,such a talent is a gift they have yet to receive.

    The society does have to function as a whole, and people are expected to make friends and have real conversations.For some this is an enjoyable thing, but for others,even to fullfill the very fundamental conversation/communication in daily life can turn out to be a huge challenge.I can still remember my only bed-wetting experience in kindergarten, I was wide awake, I was dying to go to the washroom but I was too terrified to tell the teacher.And finally I decided I couldn't hold any longer and better let things be. This personal experience shows vividly how strong such a flaw in people's character can influence a person's decision and behaviour. But I'm still different from the youth in the example above, since I do not feel troubled of being alone and I'm a highly rational person for most of time.But for people who have this flaw in their personality and who are also longing for a real conversation and understanding of others, tranvesty can happen————Instead of reaching out actively, they would choose to go opposite position: become more cold in the appearance, show less interests in other people and try to persuade him/herself that others do not worth their attention; diliberately use extreme/radical language to gain a sense of existence or to attract a little bit more attention, meanwhile to make others believe that they do not care and they have better doings. They disguise themself as 'demons',try very hard to persuade themself to believe that 'It's better to reign in hell than to serve in heaven' even when they do have an angel's heart and a strong craving for heaven. By doing so, they won't feel so hurt and they could 'lie' to themselves that such a result is out of their own freewill.Afterall, no one wants to be a loser and no one wants to admit failure.

     I guess what I'm trying to say is that, human is such an intelligent, advanced and emotional creature, this also means it's appearance(on language,behaviour,facial expression etc.) can be very misleading. I always try to maintain an unbiased attitude when gossipe with others concerning people that I don't know very well, not because I'm a coward or I'm trying to be a goody-goody, it's just because I know how the truth can be different. Sometimes what hides behind the coarse、cold shell is just a lonely, fragile soul.

Reasons for Women to Smoke?

     I've read a very instructive extract from a book called Biography of an Idea:  Menoirs of a Public  Relations  Counsel during my basic video class, it's content is focused on Promoting Lucky Strike Cigarettes to Women in the Late 1920s.     

     This article has revealed how the media and manufacturers can manipulate people’s attitude. But there are much more than this behind it. Lucky Strike targeted female smokers in order to expand their business, they used a bunch of methods, including change the fashionable color to green(to match the packet of its products), holding a Green Ball with celebrities dressed in green, and made a joint effort with fashion magazines(vogue), feminism movement ,texture industry; and psychoanalysts. People tend to criticize how media manipulate our will and mislead our judgment, but the fact is that nothing comes by itself. The media simply “setting forces in motion that would influence other forces;and the stage that allows the media to exert its influence successfully is built by all of us."

   People used to consider it is shocking for a woman to smoke. But as the emancipation of women has arrived , the flopper and feminism culture have become widely known,women want to try to show the world that they are as good as men. This includes promote smoking among women, since smoking has long been considered as men's privilege. Feminists consider cigarette as a torch of freedom and equality, an indispensable part of realizing the equality between men and women.

  This can also explain why the Lucky Strike's commercial activity of promoting
cigarettes to women could be so successful, since"nothing stands by itself".Like I mentioned before about why young people smoke in the previous blog, sometimes people would make such a choice, not due to smoking itself, but to use it as a symbol for certain purpose. Some of the female smokers are doing so to control the body weight(ballerina), some of the female smokers actually have never enjoyed cigarette, they merely use it as a torch to assert feminism, a kind of overcorrect emotion can be found here.

Some thoughts:why young people smoke

        Actually research shows that most adolescents who are smoking are not attracted by “smoking” itself. For most of the time, they adopt the habit from their parents, neighbors or friends.Also,the propaganda of media has contributed a little bit(for example, if the actor he or she likes has made an ad for a certain brand of cigarette, then he or she may also want to give it a try). Sometimes they smoke in order to show their difference or rebellious spirit; and sometimes they smoke in order to fit into a certain social group. So smoking for adolescents seldom comes alone by itself, it is more like a combination of multiple factors.

   Also,the advertisements about cigarette has changed a lot during time.Before, the images on handbills were focused on tobacco itself(for example, a bundle of fine tobacco surrounded by sunshine, or an image of a dozen cigarettes). Nowadays such advertisement is hard to see. Most time manufacturers would focus on the culture signal that the advertisement can convey with it (the culture, value, history and dignity).Sometimes the direct image of cigarette may not even appear in the advertisement. The cognitive meaning of tobacco(or cigarette) is becoming more and more detached from the object itself.Instead, it is becoming a culture symbol. Maybe this can be considered as another reason for why people would smoke(to fit in, to show personal identity and taste etc.).And such appended meaning can be very attractive to young people,since they are at a special period of their life and they are eager to assert their identity and personality through various channels.

source:Ali ,Khatidja. ADOLESCENT SMOKING CESSATION: THE INFLUENCE OF PEERS. 2011,UMI Number: 3485874

#3 : a little non-scholarly book I've enjoyed

    I've read a very interesting little book that is edited more than a century ago:Pipe and pouch, the smokers own book of poetry. And I've enjoyed it profoundly.
   This is not what one would call a "scholarly book", but I do have learned a lot from it. A person who doesn't smoke can never understand the joy that smoking brings. It is easy to collect scientific data and do control-group experiments, but what smoking really brings to smokers can never be precisely assessed. Now the technology is developing faster and faster, our transportation and communication is also becoming faster and faster, but the distance between people is growing larger and larger. It is no one's fault, it is how things work out. Individuals are growing more and more lonely in this world with a great abundance of material, meanwhile the vanity of heart is becoming more and more intolerable. Cigarette has become the loyal sole company for them. It is normal that different people have different attitudes toward smoking, since human is a very ambivalent species and tobacco is a very ambivalent plant(like I mentioned in blog#2). When these two come together, a clear and logical conclusion just cannot be made. However, this is forever a monodrama. No matter what we say and think about tobacco, it just stays silent. Stay silent when it is lying under the sun with its green leaves or when it is burned into ash in red sparkles."What care I for the weather? Though winter greeze, or summer broil. We rest us from the days of toil, my Pipe and I together."(Hermann Rave 69)

Knight, Joseph, b. 1845.Pipe and pouch, the smokers own book of poetry. Boston: Joseph Knight company, 1895. Print

#2:Some conjecture on why tobacco is not banned based on National Health Statistic Reports

     This document,National Health Statistic Reports, gives us a detailed list about the smoking and drinking condition of people in different ages. No doubt, smoking has become a big potential health problem all around the world today. Someone may pose a question like this: well, since smoking is so harmful and causes so many disease, why don't we simply forbid it? I think there are two main reasons for the existence of tobacco : first, the component of tobacco is “lucky”, it can stimulant one’s brain, but not as poisonous as other drugs. It can make smokers become addictive, but not as harmful as drugs. It is cheap and easy to carry, and it has made a great contribution to the tax. Neither the smokers nor the government wants to lose it, so they both make a concession(the consumers pay a higher price and the government charges a higher tax). The second reason is that people always need something to comfort themself, since not everything in their life is rosy. The cost of a packet of cigarette and some side effects sometimes are better than a homicide or suicide----after all, not everyone is good at dealing with pressure and depression in their life.

source:

Cheryl D. Fryar, M.S.P.H.; Mercy C. Merino, B.S.; Rosemarie Hirsch, M.D., M.P.H.; and Kathryn S. Porter, M.D., M.S. National Health Statistic Reports.1999-2004.2

#1:Different Aspects on Tobacco

   At this time, my blog would focus on tobacco itself and its effects on this society(media, culture, people's behaviour(especially women and young people). I'm going to introduce some basic knowledge about tobacco, since I believe it's essential to get a basic recognition about the thing I'm researching on before going into other aspects.

    In before, tobacco was mainly used as a medicine, and it had been highly glorified. For a moment it was hard to find a disease that the “holy herb” couldn’t cure. The earliest using method of tobacco is called “drink smoke”. The use of smoke to treat disease is not unique though, ancient Creeks used to burn dried colt’s feet for treating asthma. But by that time, not too long after Columbus just discovered the New World, everything in the New World had an extra attraction to them. They were eager about discovering new species that can bring great fortune to their homeland and make a big change of their lives. Thus they had magnified the effects of tobacco subliminaly. The fetish of tobacco at that time has more or less to do with such mentality.
  
    During that time, the value of tobacco was mainly focused on its material benefits. As time goes by,the usage is more and more focused on spiritual and aesthetic fields. People use it for inspiration; they use it as a token of their own personality and social status; they use it as a gift or simply hold a cigarette to pose for a nice picture. Ironically, when the superstitions about tobacco is broken and all its harmful chemical elements have been discovered and published, the usage of tobacco has been levered to a more “sublime” level.Our further research will continue from here in my later blogs. 

Below is some basic information I summerized about tobacco for those who may interested:

 The origin and domestication of tobacco:

1.Tobacco is part of the results of Columbus Exchange,a gift from the New World.The earliest record of tobacco is from Columbus' Journal, on October15, 1492:"I found a man alone in a canoe...He had food and water and some dry leaves which must be a thing very much appreciated among them,because they have already brought me some of them as a present at San Salvador..."(Brooks,1952,p.11).

2. At the beginning of 17th century, tobacco has become a major money crop of Virginia,
Maryland and sections of North Caroline. It soon spread to England as a "paid duty to the Crown".
(Robert,1938).

3.The name"tobacco" was first documented by a Bishop, Bartolome de Las Casas:"These muskets,as we will call them,they call tobacco(tabacos)..."(Brooks 32). The scientific title of the genus(Nicotiana) is named after Jean Nicot,a French Ambassador to Portugal.(Lehman Brothers,1955)

4.The leaves Columbus saw were Nicotiana rustica, whose smoke is harsh; the modern tobacco with a far more milder taste is Nicotiana tabacum, was brought to Haiti from Yucatan.(Lehman Brothers,1955,p.10)


  The transplantation and dissemination of tobacco:

l.In 16th century, courtiers and learned people in Spain,Portugal and France have already
adopted smoking for relaxation,they also used the leaf for treating ailments.

2.In about 1560, Jean Nicot ,a French Ambassador to Portugal, highly promoted the medical effectsof tobacco and sent it to King FrancisⅡ.

3.Large amount of tobacco had been shipped to England : in 1617,the number is 20,000 pounds; in 1698, 40,000,000 pounds ; during 1771-1775, the number has reached 102,000,000 pounds( Robert,1938).

  The production of tobacco:

l.Since the cultivation of tobacco is "high labor requirements,but low capital outlay",the farms tend to be many and samll(Lehman Brothers,1955,p.32).After the leaves are cured(dried in a barn), they were shipped to market in hogshead and sale at auction. Later most of the leaves are made into tobacco for medical use.

2.As the development of technology and mass use of machine,small growers are disappearing while larger corporations come into place(Mann,1975).The development of transportation , storage and tobacco processing forge a stronger tie between growers and manufactures. Most of tobacco is made into cigars and cigarettes.Also, more and more manufacture processes(sweating, dipping, boiling licorice etc.) are added in order to accommodate to the various tastes of consumers.

main sources:

Lehman Brothers. About tobacco. [n.p.] 1955.

Brooks, Jerome E.The mighty leaf; tobacco through the centuries. Boston: Little, Brown 1952.
 
Robert, Joseph C.The tobacco kingdom. Durham, N. C: Print,Duke University Press, 1938

Lehman Brothers. About tobacco.Print [n.p.] 1955.

Mann, Charles Kellogg, 1934-, Tobacco : the ants and the elephants. Salt Lake City : Print,Olympus Pub. Co., 1975

Some interesting Blog URLs:

1 http://tobaccoanalysis.blogspot.com/ : contains various topics of tobacco and organized by date; very easy to read.

2 http://rodutobaccotruth.blogspot.com/ : a great blog that call on people to smoke less cigarettes and with data base that concerning tobacco related diseases.

3 http://www.talkingtobacco.com/tobacco-blog/: a blog that focuses on tobacco products and news.