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POPSMeet the Algorithm Small thank you to Alan Turing for making this a mathematical possibility. Also available in one form or another in video games, flash animations,java scripts, php.
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POPSTuring: Campaigners demand pardon for mathematics genius full at source: A month later, after Turing, a veteran of the then still secret Bletchley Park code-cracking team, had been giving a talk to the BBC on his pioneering work on artificial intelligence, he returned home to find his house burgled. Related articles * More UK News The culprit was an acquaintance of Murray's, who would prey on Murray's lovers, thinking they would be so afraid of being outed that they would not report the thefts to the police. But Turing defied this convention and went straight to the police, where he admitted his affair – a "crime" for which he was spared the normal two-year jail term in favour of a hormonal treatment designed to beef up his masculine urges and suppress his homosexuality. The resulting publicity was to prove too much to bear and in June 1954, the 41-year-old was found dead in bed by his housekeeper. He had eaten an apple he had laced with poison.
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POPSA Math Romance Top Ten Things That Math and Sex Have in Common 10. Explicit discussions of either topic is a faux pas at most cocktail parties. 9. Historically, men have been in control, but there are now efforts to get women more involved. 8. There are many joint results. 7. Both are prominent on college campuses, and are usually practiced indoors. 6. Most people wish they knew more about both subjects. 5. Both involve long and hard problems, and can produce interesting topology and geometry. 4. Both merit undivided attention, but mathematicians are prone to think about one while doing the other. 3. Saint Augustine was hostile to both, and Alan Turing took an unusual approach to both. 2. Both typically begin with a lot of hard work and end with a great but brief reward. 1. Professionals are generally viewed with suspicion, and most do not earn high pay.
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POPS Turing Bombe, the WWII Nazi Code-Breaking Machine [PICS] War veterans Ruth Bourne, left, and Jean Valentine, who served in Women's Royal Navy Service during World War II, stand in front of the machine, that played a crucial part in cracking the Nazi, Enigma code, Teams of highly skilled mathematicians, cryptologists, inventive thinkers and crossword enthusiasts would receive hundreds of Nazi codes and ‘guess’ the approximate real message or plain text. This ‘crib’ would be given to the Wrens who would set it on the Bombe’s alphabet wheels. By checking all the permutations, the crib would help locate the true message within the code. "There were 210 such bookcase-like Bombes that gave Britain advance warning of Hitler’s plans and shortened the conflict by two years. " This replica is called Phoenix.
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POPSLove, Hate - Uncertainty "In a society desperate to find certainty, and beset on all sides by people who claim to have it, this seems like a suitable moment to show that the idea of certainty-from-on-high was discredited 100 years ago. I wanted to tell the stories of the people who made this discovery and the great personal price they paid. A line of thinkers from Georg Cantor to Alan Turing saw the extent of the uncertainty in science, and incompleteness in logic and mathematics, and understood what we still haven't grasped as a culture. I am fascinated by just how reluctant we are to face up to what these heroes revealed."
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POPSNo program has won the gold or silver prizes "No program has won the gold or silver prizes. The silver would go to a machine that could pass a longer version of the Turing Test and fool at least half the judges. The gold would go to a machine that could process audio and visual information rather than just text. " "Despite _ or maybe because of _ his win, Roberts said he did not buy Turing's argument. "I don't think it's anything like thought," he said of Elbot's conversational prowess. "If you know a magic trick, you know how it's done, it's not magic anymore. Sorry to be so pessimistic." Still i think this event is important in the path of AI emergence.
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POPSIntelligent Computers Put To The Test It could also raise profound questions about whether a computer has the potential to be 'conscious' - and if humans should have the 'right' to switch it off. >>> I haven't seen humans having too much problem in 'shutting off' each other. What does it say about consciousness ?
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POPSTuring test, put to test next week. "I think the reason Alan Turing set this game up was that maybe to him consciousness was not that important; it's more the appearance of it, and this test is an important aspect of appearance.' "The test will be carried out by human 'interrogators', each sitting at a computer with a split screen: one half will be operated by an unseen human, the other by a program. The interrogators will then begin separate, simultaneous text-based conversations with both of them on any subjects they choose. After five minutes they will be asked to judge which is which." "a program needs only to make 30 per cent or more of the interrogators unsure of its identity to be deemed as having passed the test, based on Turing's own criteria"
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POPSWill the Internet Evolve into a Lifeform? One route is the evolution of electronic intelligences in situations like the internet-arms race between spammers and shielders. It might sound silly, the idea that new life could be created in an attempt to offer you a great deal on C1@Lis!!, but have you tried registering for a forum recently? Even gaining access to the lowest level of interaction online now requires elementary Turing tests to tell the humans from the robots. Another option is the idea of the net itself becoming sentient, a vast self-modifying array of connections and information storage with limited connections to the outside world (kind of like that glob of grey goo you carry around in your skull). If that happens then Gibson help us all - remember that the net is made of about 90% spam, 9% porn, and quite a lot of whining blogs. If that mixture ever becomes self-aware we're not quite sure what it'll do, but the odds are against it being anything good.
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