Saturday, August 30, 2014

BIG MACHINES FOR BIG JOBS?

First, let me assure you that I am not a fan of "Machine intelligence": I am a skeptic about all such ideas because I have never yet seen any system that even vaguely resembles human awareness of its world or human mental ability.
That said, there are things computers could do that might improve lives if they are permitted (or, cynically, if someone pays for it to be done) . . and this is the sort of thing IBM is now trying out in this article.
This could be good, dealing with the mountain of stuff churned out by people in labcoats, boiling it down automatically and deriving or "mining" information from the mountains of data . . . .
but something sticks in my mind about this.

I recall an old scifi short story where someone invented the "de-legaliser" - software that read legal documents and rephrased it in simple terms that anyone could understand. Of course, the next step was to make the software work in reverse . . . . and by then the machines had started taking over the whole legal business.

I am curious to see how far this whole circuit circus goes.
Just remember that there is no actual research going on here folks, and also note that not all research papers are true and accurate:
Is the software smart enough to know when it "reads" faked research? 
How does it deal with the minefield of legal ownership, copyrights and patents?

One can imagine a scientist who has just completed his life's work only to be trumped effortlessly by a machine in a few minutes.
Hmm. . .

 


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