Local Man Installs Intelligence on His Work Laptop

A historic milestone was achieved today when local man Ted Stevens became the first human person to successfully install intelligence on his work laptop. The installation of intelligence began at exactly 9:02 am EST when Ted clicked on the install.exe icon that was automatically displayed on the screen of his laptop following the insertion of a USB memory stick containing the intelligence into the back of the machine. Five minutes later, at exactly 9:07 am the installation was complete and Ted’s laptop became intelligent. “I didn’t think it would be as easy as all that.” said Mr. Stevens earlier today when reached for comment. “I got a notice last week from the vendor of an instrument I use everyday in the lab that a new software was being released and that I had been selected as a beta trial site. I asked what improvements were being made and that’s when they told me it was now intelligent. I gotta say I was a bit skeptical at first, but then I remembered reading about all the amazing advances in artificial intelligence and how they are everywhere nowadays and just figured we were finally catching up with the rest of the world. When I started the install I guess I was sort of thinking there would be some screaming or moaning or something, sort of like the pangs of childbirth. Instead all I heard was a soft ding signalling the installation was complete and telling me it was safe to remove my USB stick. As soon as it was over I asked the intelligent laptop some questions about philosophy and science that had been bothering me forever thinking it would almost certainly have the answers. No answers came though, and the laptop appeared for all intents and purposes to be exactly as it was prior to becoming intelligent. They told me this thing was educated at the best machine learning institutions in the world, but this is all I get?” At that point he sighed softly, looked down sadly at his newly intelligent laptop and hit the power off button once sending the intelligence into sleep mode. “Oh well, I guess I’ll just never understand how this artificial intelligence stuff works” This reporter was unable to obtain any comment from the intelligence itself as it has no mouth with which to give answers, or body to contain a mouth, or ability to understand questions.

Article: Since I was not yet at the required 600 words when this story came to an end below find a special bonus writing section which is a great example of just one of the many ways people misunderstand machines and computers and misapply our language when talking about them. Warning, this section is not funny. Enjoy!

We Have a Serious Misunderstanding About Understanding

Defining Things in Terms Machines Can Understand - How Do You Define “Safe Driving” in Terms a Machine Can Understand? - Writing the robotic rules of the road

You start by acknowledging the fact that a machine is incapable of understanding anything since it is a machine and cannot learn, or acquire knowledge, or understand. Then you do the exact same thing you do when you program any computer. Determine the set of rules (in this case the “robotic rules of the road” as the authors not at all cleverly put it in the article) that you would like the machine in question to follow, type a string of gibberish (of course it is not gibberish, it just seems like that to those who are not acquainted with the languages of programming) into a screen, run program, debug with more gibberish, repeat until it follows those rules without error. The set of rules can be continually adjusted (either by humans or the machine itself in ways previously defined by or with mathematical and statistical boundaries set by humans) over time until the outcome is a program that outputs a “safe” driving vehicle result. It is not the defining the rules for the machine to “understand” that is the problem, it is the defining the rules for us to understand, then us translating our understanding into algorithms via computer programming languages that is the problem. The computer/machine never changes its ability or not to understand (it has none) it simply executes the program we enter into it. And in case you were thinking it, modern computers are no different then their ancient brethren in this regard. No matter how clever the mathematical and statistical techniques are or become that are used in the algorithms that are the “brains” of the computer, they are still, at base, nothing more than a series of equations and rules. If you believe the human mind/body is also at base nothing more than a series of equations and rules then you are justified in your belief that a computer could understand something like a human. If you do not believe this then that belief is not justified. Understand?