h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I've just mistyped my name for online banking and have locked myself out for the second time. Will have to wait till Thursday when the bank opens late to go and get it re-set. I have a very good memory for all passwords, numbers, etc., I just sometimes forget what's upper and what's lower case.

Gah - that is frustrating, and kind of defeats the object of online banking to have to wait for the bank branch to be open and physically go there...

I was lucky that when I locked myself out (because I had changed my password but then remembered the old one by mistake) I could telephone a computer to sort it out

You can telephone computers nowadays?

Hard to get access to anything else

Oh, you must mean the so-called intwlligent kind. The ones that can recognize your voice. It all seems like a racket to me, but anyway...

Last time I did this, I went along to the bank. I was invited into the Manager's office and entered my password on his computer until I got in again.

Now I think about it, that does sound a rather old-fashioned way of dealing with it.

I'm not sure how they could do it by telephone or on line, but maybe I'll phone them tomorrow. The hotline is open today (Sunday), but it's hardly an emergency.

These days most phones are touchtone phones that enable you to type into a computer over the phone because each number on the keypad has a different frequency.

They do sometimes ask me to speak the numbers, though, which is a challenge - I say eg 0987654 and the phone computer says, "sorry, I didn't get that" so I say it again, and the computer says "sorry, I didn't get that", and then eventually says "please type the number" and I say "thank you, you could have given me that option in the first place"...

Artificial intelligence is 99% artificial and 1% intelligence. Still, the intelligence part could be improved. it might rise to 2%

That is just prejudice. Alan Turing believed in artificial intelligence and I am inclined to believe Alan Turing.

He's a hard person to doubt. However, I've been reading "What if, Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions" by Randall Munroe. Munroe addresses the question, "How much computing power could we achieve if the entire world population...started doing calculations? How would it compare to a modern computer or smartphone" Ah, comparing human intelligence to computer intelligence. It's getting harder to invent tasks that a single human can do better than all the computers in the world, *but* humans still have the edge when it comes to looking at a picture and guessing what just happened. Then Munroe mentions that computers haven't been programmed to do that. Until someone tried to program them, we won't know for sure. So maybe someday artificial intelligence will improve drastically. But who am I to predict?

I saw an interesting article recently that debunks the notion of comparing brains and computers, on the basis that a brain is not a retrieval system.

http://aeon.co/essays/your-brain-does-not-process-information-and-it-is-not-a-computer

This does not rule out AI but suggests it is not the same as human intelligence. No problem with that.

I can't remember where I saw it, but the best definition of artificial intelligence I ever saw was the definition:

COMPUTER n. A kind of typewriter.

The best argument I saw for it was the example of putting a candle under a wall thermostat, to make the system think it's warmer in the room than it is. If you don't want to say 'think' there, that's your choice, but it is probably more hassle than it is worth, studiously avoiding the word 'think'. Feedback machines do something like 'thinking that something is the case', and is there really a good reason to hive off the word for human use only?

It may have been Dan Dennett, but I think it was Steven Pinker who put that argument.

Certainly a computer is a kind of typewriter, and an animal is a kind of plant (with added functions).

I appreciate your viewpoint, and I think you've described that our language is insufficient to convey the complexities that ensue in this argument. Many words have diverse usages, of course. (Studiously avoiding the word 'meanings' there)

I imagine that the security programs which require users to identify words, numbers, or pictures before access is allowed have been designed to highlight the human mind's strongest area.

That would make sense.

And equally to exploit a computer's comparative weaknesses.

Thursday again yesterday and I didn't make it to the bank again. I really will have to try and reactivate my account by phone now.