Diana McPartlin (diana@asiantravel.com)
Sat, 11 Oct 1997 04:12:11 +0100
Lars Marius Garshol wrote:
> Mhhm. Imagine this:
>
> JUDGE: What does this make you think:
> Snowfall,
> unspeakable, infinite
> loneliness.
>
> How do you list an answer to that?
You can't. Poetry doesn't follow rational rules. In the absence of a
rational description of poetry how can you possibly write a computer
program that can make judgements about it? All it takes to spot the
different between a human and a computer is to ask a few questions that
require judgement, ask them about likes and dislikes, opinions and
experiences.
I wonder if anyone else in the LS is familiar with the Japanese virtual
idols - computer generated pop stars. IMHO these computer beings are far
closer to humans than Big Blue. They might not have such impressive
processing power but they are programmed to have likes and dislikes,
histories and opinions. You could have a convincing conversation with
one of them -- as long as you stuck to questions such as "what's your
favorite color?" "favorite food?" etc. But ask them something that they
haven't been programmed to respond to and the illusion falls apart.
Even if you programmed a computer to have an answer to every single like
and dislike currently known to woman it wouldn't work. Someone can
always come up with a brand new idea, a brand new poem. Unless the
computer has its own sense of value it cannot make value judgements
about new phenomena. You could always catch it out by presenting it with
an original idea and asking it for its opinion.
Diana
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