Programming could surely be improved a great deal, since some languages were designed to be bad to give programmers lots of work. And x86 architecture is baroque from an assembly language perspective.
But while I am on the topic, let me go slightly off topic, there is a lot that I think is rather silly, for instance AI and Robots. Mostly these have been conceived of being created by either some MacGyvered solution or some mimicry of an insect or overly basic natural process. I disagree, for the robot, if you give it all the sensors (cameras, 3D laser scanners) needed to make a proper 3D model of the world around it, it does not need tricks to navigate the world. Any more than the AI player in computer games which has from the start of computer games been very able to challenge human players on a more level playing field. And once a computer is able to create a high quality 3D model of the world around it, having it recognize what things likely are, categorized by type becomes pretty simple. And once it knows of the general form and material characteristics of a plate (it could also access the internet where plates are sold with images that match the appearance to the word). And text to speech is old hat... So there is very little from stopping a barely programmed robot from being asked to get a plate and working out that the sounds relate to words, the forms of the sentence appears to be a command of the robot, plates seem to be flat things often for eating of, often white and often made of porcelain (it could check wikipedia). It could likely learn also learn that plates are often in kitchens, recognize what room seems likely to be the kitchen, explore, and bring a medium sized plate if one can be found. But where is such a robot? Oh, last I heard they couldn't recognize a key ring! But a key ring is easy to describe, it is metal, metal should be detected by thermal readings and colour/reflection analysis, and it is a circle with a limited range of sized and most often keys attached. So where is the problem? I am pretty sure sufficient technology has not been supplied to see what is in front of it, to see the world as we do. I think artificial intelligence is much the same, it has been tried on the cheap, hoping a gimmick will be found. Note I am not talking about artificial consciousness. AI that could pass the turing test is simple. But I said simple, not easy. A human being that is only a year old yet somehow mature that has been force feed details is not going to act like a normal person. For a computer to act like a human, if firstly needs a state of being and states of being are based on hunger, boredom (wanting unique or familiar input), wanting to connect to another, emotions etc... And so a computer needs to be told it needs to breath, and it needs to need food, and need security and friendship. These different modules give it something perhaps a bit dangerous, an agenda! It needs to grow up either as a robot in the real world or in a simulated reality so it has a history, memories, movies it has watched. Now a robot 'without consciousness' watching a movie might seem odd, but like us it would need the power to imagine it were the characters, to experience their pain joy, adventure and fear. What Myers Briggs type would the AI have? The point I am making is that there is not really anything truly complex, unknown or mysterious about how to create such an AI, but is is a lot of work to create and 'raise' a complete being. Without having all these qualities, drives, history and characteristics and many more besides no computer will be convincing as a normal human intelligence. One without language or social problem anyway, after all it is very easy to simulate a real human who has shut a door and refuses to speak or let you in, but that hardly counts as a valid Turing test. John On Wed, Jan 28, 2015 at 11:31 AM, Jed Rothwell <jedrothw...@gmail.com> wrote: > James Bowery <jabow...@gmail.com> wrote: > > >> For many day-to-day operations the responsiveness of systems like MS >> Windows has actually decreased. >> > > That is because they keep adding bells and whistles. It is feature-itus > run amok. When I installed recent versions of Windows I went through and > turned off a bunch of features and it went back to working quickly again. > The features that slow down my computer the most are ones that display all > kinds of useless clutter on the screen. I think Windows was going slowly > because of a bottleneck between the CPU and the screen display, rather than > bad programming *per se*. It may be a problem on my computer in > particular, because it has an old, 2-port screen display card attached to > two large screens. > > > >> There are real advances in software but they're generally buried in the >> noise. >> > > I think there must have been some astounding advances in software > recently, judging by the results at places like Google and IBM. I mean, for > example: > > * Self driving cars. Many experts predicted this would take another 20 > years, but here they are, and they are reportedly safer than human drivers. > > * Google's uncanny ability to recognize faces, which is beginning to > exceed the human ability. > > * Google's ability to translate documents. This is still way behind human > abilities, but it is far ahead of where the technology was 10 years ago. > > * The Watson computer and its superhuman ability to win at Jeopardy and > diagnose diseases. > > They could not have done these things with hardware alone. Nor do I think > they could do them by brute force methods. Watson and the Google-Plex are > MPP computers, so however difficult it is to write MPP software, apparently > they are making progress in doing it. > > Google has published papers describing its MPP techniques. > > - Jed > >
