Compress Wikipedia and Win AI Prize

Baldrson writes "If you think you can compress a 100M sample of Wikipedia better than paq8f, then you might want to try winning win some of a (at present) 50,000 Euro purse. Marcus Hutter has announced the Hutter Prize for Lossless Compression of Human Knowledge the intent of which is to incentivize the advancement of AI through the exploitation of Hutter's theory of optimal universal artificial intelligence. The basic theory, for which Hutter provides a proof, is that after any set of observations the optimal move by an AI is find the smallest program that predicts those observations and then assume its environment is controlled by that program. Think of it as Ockham's Razor on steroids. Matt Mahoney provides a writeup of the rationale for the prize including a description of the equivalence of compression and general intelligence."

But captain

[Anonymous Coward]

Marcus Hutter has announced the Hutter Prize for Lossless Compression of Human Knowledge the intent of which is to incentivize the advancement of AI through the exploitation of Hutter's theory of optimal universal artificial intelligence.

But captain, if we reverse the tachyon inverter drives then we will have insufficient dilithium crystals to traverse the neutrino warp.

As long as it is Wiki that we are talking about...

[gatkinso]

There. All of wiki, in 31 bytes.

Who'da thunk...

[blueadept1]

Man, WinRar is taking its bloody time. But oh god, when its done, I'll be rich!

Easy!

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

arj

Lossy Compression?

[Millenniumman]

Convert it to AOL! tis wikpedia, teh fri enpedia . teh bst in da wrld.

Re:But captain

[Anonymous Coward]

You left out the part involving the deflector shield. Remember, the first rule of star trek technobabel is always involve the deflector in some way.

Re:Can it be "lossy" compression?

[richdun]

Hmmm...well in that case, someone go edit the Wikipedia entry on "computers" and allow them to store data at the bit level. Also, I heard somewhere where computers in Africa have tripled in the past six months!

Re:Can it be "lossy" compression?

[Bill Kilgore]

I have a program that compresses 100M of Wikipedia to one bit with no loss at all. The program is somewhat special-purpose, and at 100,024,076 bytes, a little chunkier than I'd like.

Solution.

[Funkcikle]

Removing all the incorrect and inaccurate data from the Wikipedia sample should "compress" it down to at least 20mb.

Then just apply your personal favourite compression utility.

I like lharc, which according to Wikipedia was invented in 1904 as a result of bombarding President Lincoln, who plays Commander Tucker in Star Trek: Enterprise with neutrinos.

Incentivize?

[noidentity]

the intent of which is to incentivize the advancement of AI

Sorry, anything which uses the word "incentivize" does not involve intelligence, natural or artificial.

Re:It's a big world out there

[gardyloo]

TFA is a neat idea theoreretically, but it's progeny will never be able to leave the lab.

      Your use of "TFA" is a good compressional technique, but you could change "it's" to "its" and actually GAIN in meaning while losing a character! You're well on your way...

I'll try:

[dcapel]

echo "!#/bin/sh\nwget en.wikipedia.org/enwiki/" > archive

Mine wins as it is roughly 40 bytes total.To get your results, you simply need to run the self-extracting archive, and wait. Be warned, it will take a while, but that is the cost of such a great compression scheme!

Re:WikiPedia on iPod!

[Asztal_]

Umm... which of the 5 thousand links is the article?

C++

[The Bungi]

Interestingly enough, the source code [fit.edu] for the compressor is C++. One would expect the thing to be written in pure C.

A (good) sign of the times, I guess.

Re:I'll try:

[MarkRose]

echo "!#/bin/cat /dev/tty0" > archive

Here's one that's even shorter, but you have to type in the decryption key exactly right.

Re:Comparison

[joshier]

Well, if I knew that 15 years ago, I would indeed have been a genuis, sadly I realized too late and my genuis talents are wasted yet again.

Have no fear though, I'm working on a new one.

And there was me thinking..

[baz1860]

that the entire knowledge of the world could simply be compressed without loss to

yeah, you guessed it..

42...

wikicast

[VolciMaster]

a method for periodically re-syncing...

So, we need a WikiCast - remember folks, you heard it here first!

Would be useful for images

[aliquis]

... now all we need is a dictionary for nudity and we could save a lot of bandwidth on the Internet!

Re:But captain

[Anonymous Coward]

Off Topic, I know... but I must ask...

Do you think that Shatner, while just standing around, like in the supermarket, or waiting in line at the post office, just kinda gets this faraway look on his face, and screams out in a tortured voice...

KAAAAHHHHHHHHNNNNN!!! ...Then just goes back to what he was doing like nothing happened?

Re:But captain

[Anonymous Coward]

No, but I suppose people do that *to* him!

Compress Wikipedia and win a prize?

[Dachannien]

Can't I just punch the monkey for $20 instead?

Re:Not sure if that's a joke.

[Andrew Kismet]

Of course he was joking. If he was serious he would've said "verbificate".

Re:Painful to read

[PeeAitchPee]

He did, but Slashdot's AI compressed it for him.

:-D

Re:WikiPedia on iPod!

[Kyoushu]

I like to hitchhike, and I could use a guide like this on my travels.