Google Eyed
Computers aren't so clever.
Warning: This product is guaranteed SR free. The exclusion of Scientific Research in its formulation ensures the efficacy of the therapeutic ingredients, bloody-minded cussedness and non-PC opinion, which have been shown to improve the functioning of the chuckle muscle. According to Ken Dodd’s Diddymen Encyclopaedia of Common Ailments, grave personality disorders are the inevitable consequence if this muscle is not given regular exercise. This product contains nuts.
The number-crunching power of the computer so impresses us all that the possibility of a truly artificial intelligence seems within our grasp. We need only a little of our own intelligence to find facts; super efficient search engines work out what we want to know with minimal human input. So can we at last discard that one-time tenet of computer logic GIGO (Garbage In Garbage Out)? I think not.
Intelligence is defined as the capacity to acquire and apply knowledge. The search engine will certainly find facts for us, but the knowledge it has is not original. It is not inventive in the sense that Archimedes or Newton could have clicked on to Google to formulate their discoveries. The computer, of itself, cannot discover anything. It can certainly work out the answer to a new problem by juggling all the facts from what is known at a particular moment in time, but this ability is not intelligence. The keyword in the definition is acquire; the computer can never discover things by accident; serendipity cannot be programmed into a machine.
The computer is still essentially stupid. It wiggle-lined acquire in the last sentence of the preceding paragraph, suggesting acquired, which would be totally inaccurate since the keyword referred to was acquire. It still refuses to lie down as it now wants me to use acquires in the second sentence of this paragraph on the basis of subject/verb agreement. I know why it cannot handle this problem, but the computer does not: it is not intelligent, and it never will be because it cannot read my mind.
Computers are programmed to answer closed questions. They can only switch between a YES and a NO answer. To be able to answer the open question, ‘How old are you?’ the computer would have to ask an indeterminate number of closed questions probably starting with, 'Are you one year old?' until a YES answer is achieved. Very clever, but I can find out someone’s age by asking one closed question. I can also use my intelligence to read the signs telling me to mind my own business!
Nevertheless, the ability gap between sentient beings and computers is narrowing, but not in the way we might expect. The computer is not acquiring intelligence; rather, human beings are dumbing-down in order to communicate with machines. The reason I am unable to operate my VCR efficiently is that I am not thinking in the tiny YES/NO steps the machine demands, and the reason I cannot remove the nagging pop-up from my security system that appears every time I switch on my computer is that it does not ask me the right questions.
A suspicious script has been detected… Do you want to… followed by several options, the nearest to my requirements being …stop this script, and of course it does that – but not permanently! Perhaps the poor darling just can’t do that; perhaps a nasty hacker has singled me out for lifetime persecution, I do not know, but perhaps, more worryingly, neither does my security provider.
We are all familiar with recorded telephone instructions like: Press 1 if you want to report a murder…Yes, I fear it will not be long before 999 calls go the same way as the rest of the commercial world. At present I do nothing until I hear, 'My name’s Tracy; how can I help you? But what will happen when this last ploy is no longer tolerated and the list of options does not include the fail-safe: Press any unused button if you are optimistic enough to believe that a real person will eventually speak to you.
Intelligence and personality are linked in a way rarely discussed. We all see the world differently, and that is why being told, ‘You are in a minority of one’ is so incredibly insulting. ‘You are the only one with that point of view’ or ‘You are the only one asking such a daft question’ does not necessarily mean I am stupid; it might mean that I wish to share a unique and therefore valuable insight into the matter under discussion.
It is politically correct to tolerate everyone’s views on any subject under the sun, except, of course, if you are in a minority of one. I can handle that because I can defend my corner in an argument. I, as an intelligent human being, can talk to another intelligent human being. Intelligent human beings have the capacity to change or modify their point of view; computers cannot - unless they have been programmed to do so. They can be re-programmed to take into account new circumstances as dictated by feedback from ‘most people’; they cannot, however, be influenced by a minority of one.
It seems to be accepted that the thing we all desire is Choice. Parents will be able to send their children to the school of their choice; we can all be treated in the hospital of our choice, and so on. Yeah, yeah! Sure, just as long as you select from the options Big Brother has listed for you. Choice is driving me nuts! I just don’t want choices that exclude my own.
My choice in the schools debate, for example, would be to improve all schools by demanding higher standards from all teachers. This will only be possible if Government stops meddling with its daft ‘new’ ideas, and teachers are freed from the excesses of Political Correctness that pr
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