Um... that's "/." not "./", sorry for the current directory reference.

I'm looking forward to the day when both iOS and Android devices both have continuous speech recognition tied to chatter-bot apps so that we can just sit back and watch them argue amongst themselves about which is better, thereby saving ./ 80% of the conversion space.

Then we can focus on something really important like who was more influential - Dennis Ritchie or Steve Jobs....

From your comments,I think you're worldview is pretty clear. There's really no need to discuss further.

My advice (which I'm sure you could give a damn about) would be to (really) examine your conscious (as in putting yourself in the position of those with less than yourself), do some research and then decide whether you really like the economic setup in this country (where the top 1% own nearly 40% of the wealth and have the political power that comes along with that wealth), then vote accordingly. If you are OK with Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, Larry Ellison, et al having an order of a magnitude more effective vote than yours, then keep supporting them because without attitudes like yours, their power and influence would evaporate.

If you're thinking I advocate some sort of wealth redistribution in this country, you'd be right. And if you are one of those who see "wealth redistribution" as some sort of code word for socialism, think again. The folks at the top of the economic food chain have been executing wealth redistribution for years (look up "neoliberalism"), it's just that they've been rigging the system so that the wealth rises to the top at an increasingly accelerated rate. Just compare the changes in wealth distribution in the US over the last 60 years - using hard numbers - and you'll see what I mean. Personally, I support changing that dynamic (which is really the crux of what the Occupy movement is about).

This is the same tired argument I've seen over and over again, but it's simply not true. While we don't have a consensus on universally accepted definition of intelligence, most researchers agree on what this definition must, at minimum include (as I noted above - inference, learning, goal seeking, planning, etc). I don't think AGI will arrive as an announcement from some group that "AGI has been achieved!", but rather will creep into our technology over time and will probably not be accepted as true AGI until it can no longer be denied.

Take speech recognition for example (since it's been in the news recently with the launch of Siri). This type of technology will continue to infiltrate more and more aspects of our lives and continue to get more and more capable. Though increasing it's "understanding" capabilities to the point of passing the Turing test may be a ways off, it doesn't matter. It will still offer more and more functionality and capability, even to the point that it's better at "understanding" within a domain specific application than a human would be.

Think about it this way. Bi-pedal robots still have a difficult time performing anywhere near a human at the task of walking, navigating and maneuvering over difficult terrain (such as stairs, slopes, etc). However, we have machines that can zip along our highways and 100+ miles per hour, far exceeding the capability of humans on foot at the task of long distance travel. In a similar way, AI technologies will first be applied to areas where they can outperform humans (either by being better, faster, more accurate, or some other metrics). This is already happening in many areas of our lives, whether we are aware of it or not (e.g. Navigation systems, High Frequency Trading systems, Cell phones, Information routing systems, etc).

This idea that AGI implies mimicking a human is simply the wrong way to look at the issue. We already have enough humans, we don't need to create artificial ones as well. What we need are tools that can take the capabilities of our limited organic brains to the next level to solve problems our wetware simply is not capable of solving.

Oh, in case you weren't aware of the wealth distribution in the US, you might be surprised at the following:

The top 10% own nearly 80% of the wealth of the country.

Top 1% own 38.1%
Top 96-99% own 21.3%
Top 90-95% own 11.5%
.
.
.
Bottom 40% own 0.2%

But then again, that bottom 40% are just a bunch of lazy people, unlike the to 5%, right? But wait, among the top 5%, only 19% make their income the old fashioned way (e.g. working for it). By far, most make their income through investments or other financial instruments.

Additionally, it is also important to realize that the lower half of that top 1% has far less than those in the top half; in fact, both wealth and income are super-concentrated in the top 0.1%, which is just one in a thousand.

You need to get those glasses fixed. According to your own link, the median income is $60,000 (not $80k), but even those are outdated 2009 figures. Median income is currently at about $49k. http://money.cnn.com/2011/09/13/news/economy/poverty_rate_income/index.htm

The poverty rate ( $22,314 a year for a family of four and $11,139 for an individual) rose from 14.3 in 2009 to 15.1 in 2010. You may know folks with a family of 6 making less than $40k, but I'm sure if you ask them, they'll tell you they're struggling. According to the Dept of Agriculture, the cost of raising a (1) child went from $9,860 ten years ago to $13,830 in 2010. Six people (assuming 4 children + 2 adults) = $80k+, and that assumes children cost less than adults - probably a bad assumption.

By "struggling to feed your family", I meant "providing for your family" in a generic sense, be it food, clothing, roof over their head, etc. It's true, you can send your family out to the local soup kitchen to eat. If that's the kind of America you like, well then you should be happy with the current conditions (though I doubt you'd feel the same if you were in that position).

You are correct in pointing out my incorrect usage of the word homophobic - apologies to the LGBT communities :)

The closest term I've found for what I really meant was HSC (Human Superiority Complex). Thanks for the correction.

We used to call that "income averaging", however, this was repealed in 1986 for individuals. Just another case where corporations get preferential treatment over individuals.

They may be paying 35% on their taxable income, but that's where the slippery slope is. If I made $1 Million in profits last year, but through creative accounting I can show that I had $ 900,000 in tax-deductible investments, tax shelters, etc, then I'm only going to pay 35% on the $ 100,000, which means, in effect I'm "really" only paying 3.5% of total revenue.

If on the other hand, your "small business" made $ 1 Million in taxable income (that is, profit after all deductible expenses and tax shelters are taken out) and you do wind up paying $ 350K in taxes, at least you have $ 650K in the bank in which to comfort yourself (not to mention all the money stuffed away in your tax shelters).

What the hell does that have to do with the price of tea in China?

If my bank slaps a charge on my account for something I didn't purchase, do I have to close my account and relinquish any ties I have with them before I can confront them with the issue?

Contrary to your apparent worldview, the vast majority of folks in the lower half of the income scale in this country do not have investment portfolios and are simply struggling to feed their families or pay rent.

Back in 1980, the top 1% of all income earners in America brought in about 10% of all income. Today, the top 1% of all income earners bring in about 20% of all income. If the ranks of the top income earners were populated by a huge number of entrepreneurs and small business owners, it wouldn't be such a bad thing. But instead, the reality is that most of the very wealthy either work in the financial community or they work for the biggest corporations. True capitalism is supposed to create a very healthy environment for small businesses. Instead, our current system suffocates them out of existence.

That's a semantic distinction and it could be argued that a query IS a program (i.e. it invokes a set of programmed steps to produce a result).

The following "query" does something (inserts data into SaleableItems table) and makes decisions (saleable or not saleable)
INSERT INTO SaleableItems
SELECT CAST(
CASE
WHEN Obsolete = 'N' or InStock = 'Y'
THEN 1
ELSE 0
END AS bit) as Salable, Itemnumber
FROM Product

By the same token, I can write a C "program" that can implement a query (provide an answer to a question).

In fact, by your definition, Watson is a query system. It responds to queries, but it is implemented via a large set of Java and C++ "programs" to parse the questions, consult a database , infer the answer and finally generate a response.

You really believe that? Were the civil rights protesters during the 60's hypocritical because they wore clothes manufactured by corporations controlled by white people? Were those that fought in the American Revolutionary war hypocritical because they used weapons that were copies of British design?

Perhaps you could get congress to pass a law stating that free speech should be limited to the use of technologies not controlled by corporations, thereby effectively eliminating the "problem" of free speech altogether.

I see. You are OK with the country going down the tubes as long as it doesn't impact your retirement. Gotcha. Thanks for playing.

I think you are looking at the problem through the lens of a programmer and missing the larger picture.

Self programming is the context of this discussion does not mean the computer will code up a program in "C", compile it, debug it, etc. That's just silly.

What it means is that the machine will be able to interpret, infer and learn from vast amounts of information made available to it, without having logic coded to answer specific questions.

If I ask you who the previous president of the US was, do you write up a quick program, compile and debug it in your brain and finally run it to give the answer? No, your brain stores millions upon millions of relationships between concepts you've encountered and is able to quickly produce and answer through an associative process. No programming required. That is exactly what the aim of the systems in this discussion is.

Granted, programming will be required to build these systems initially. However, once human level intelligence (AGI) is achieved (even if it's just in a specific domain such as information processing), is it so hard to imagine that no more programming will be required, since by definition AGI implies that it has achieved the same level of ability to understand the problem domain as well as any human?

As a cognitive scientist (if that is indeed true), you really should do a little more research (beyond Hofstadter).

AI (AGI in particular) does not necessarily imply imitating humans. It's a bit of a homophobic slant to think that intelligence equates to the human implementation of intelligence. If a machine can exhibit the main features of intelligence (inference, learning, goal seeking, planning, etc, and other factors depending on your definition of intelligence) then it is by definition, intelligent.

Your "Who was the cowboy in Washington?" argument is a straw-man, as you can see from the posts here, most humans didn't even get the subtle references. Watson actually did pretty well in putting together vague references as this is an integral part of the Jeopardy Q/A scheme, even to the point that it was able to best the two top humans at doing this.

To imply that AI has not made advances over the years is pure hogwash. Were capabilities such as Deep Blue, Watson, Siri, et al available 50 years ago? I think not. AI has been steadily advancing over the years, despite not living up to the hype and despite not yet achieving true "human level intelligence" (note, this is vastly different than imitating humans which by some measures fall far short of intelligence). In case you've been living in a cave, advances in AI have been accelerating over the last decade and the nexus between computing power and the various disciplines of cognitive science (neuroscience, psychology, biology, etc as well as their computational counterparts) is producing advances at a much more accelerated pace.

You go right ahead and continue reading Hofstadter and his ilk, while the rest of us continue pushing the envelope of machine IQ and one day maybe (probably within the next 10-20 years), you can continue this debate with your cell phone (or whatever personal device will have replaced it by then).

You have been referred to the redundant redundancy department.