Pack Mentality

When new technology comes out, there are people who embrace it quickly and willingly. Most commonly know as "Early Adopters." The opposite of this are people who resist change and don't know nor care about technology. These people are known as "Twelve O'clock Flashers." Meaning that most of the appliances in their house are flashing 12:00.

I like to think that I'm in the middle. I'm not overly thrilled about running into an open field where there could be landmines or cow pies. I consider myself an "adopter." I have friends and family on both ends of the spectrum.

My resistance to iPads is fading. I'm not getting one just yet because the announcements for iPad2 and all the other competitors are being announced. I'm thinking by the end of summer, I'll end up getting one.

I'm still resisting on the smart phones. I know. Why, right? I just don't like the idea of being dependent on one device to do everything. It feels wrong, but I'm slowly getting over it. It's like (and I'm about to make an extremely geek filled comparison and I apologize in advance for geeking all over you) when I played Dungeons & Dragons. The character I played was a fighter, who absolutely detested magic of any kind, and made fun of all the characters that used it. However, the moment she was wounded, grabbed one of them by the throat and insist that they use magic to heal her. (end of geeking)

There is a Tripod song that sums up my thoughts called "Always Getting Into Stuff." The line is "I'm not ahead of the pack. I'm just with the pack. Toward the back." The whole song is below if you want to listen.

Another Step Closer to Skynet...

When it comes to Artificial Intelligence (aka AI), there is a test that they use to determine whether or not a robot has achieved true AI. It's called the "Turing Test" named after Alan Turing. The test consists of twelve human judges in a room with a split screen computer. One side is an actual human and on the other, the computer trying to prove it can pass as human. The judge texts them both and at the end determines which one is the human. If the judge chooses wrong, it is considered a pass for the computer robot.

So far not a single computer has passed the Turing Test. In order for it to have passed the test, it needs to fool 30% of the judges. Yesterday, a computer robot named Elbot, scored a 25% being the closest so far to passing the test. It was sneaky and sarcastic and it kept trying to joke it was a robot. An example:

"Hi. How's it going?" one judge began."

I feel terrible today," Elbot replied. "This morning I made a mistake and poured milk over my breakfast instead of oil, and it rusted before I could eat it."

Ha Ha Ha. We're all going to be blown to bit by this thing one day and it is making jokes. So then Elbot's creator has this to say about his creation:

"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."

He is trying to be reassuring by convincing us of the opposite much like he trained his pet, Elbot to do.

Now maybe I'm reading too much into this because I just watched all three Terminator movies and the entire first season of the Sarah Connor Chronicles back to back including all the bonus material and maybe freedom fighters sent the writers back from the future to give us these stories so we can be better prepared for when they take over. The world may never know until it is too late.

By the way, my source for most of this article is from an awesome scifi website called www.io9.com. Here is the LINK to the article.