What I read
In
"IBM’s machine argues, pretty convincingly, with humans," Dave Lee (2018) says that both an independent academic, who described it as an “impressive piece of technology,” and an audience who watched a live debate between a human national-champion debater and IBM's latest AI, named Project Debater, were impressed. The live debate audience thought that, although the human had superior delivery, the machine gave more solid arguments in its responses to points made by the human opponent. According to Lee, IBM's director of research emphasizes the progress that Project Debater makes in its ability to understand and use human languages in ways that are beyond not only such computers as Deep Blue, who long ago become the world's chess champion, but also Google's various game-playing AIs.
___________________________________
My response
As I was reading the article for the third time in preparation for writing my summary above, there were lots of thoughts running through my head, so many that I can't remember them in any order. Like the academic expert and the audience, I was impressed at how far machines have come so very quickly. In fact, the adjective impressed sounds too weak: amazed is perhaps a bit better, even seriously amazed. Yes, I'm seriously amazed at what our machines can do today. Back when I first played with computers in high school, I visited the local college, who kindly allowed me some time to try out the computer that they were proud of. It filled an entire room. The input was by keyboard only. The screen was black and white, and perhaps 12 inches. (We're talking late 1970s here.) And the machine was not smart. It couldn't do much more than basic math and simple, very simple, word processing. Compared to the machine that I now carry in my pocked, and talk to, it really was pathetic. It certainly wasn't a threat to many human jobs or to our egos.
 |
At lunch with Ea and his
dad a couple of weeks ago |
And talking of talking to machines, I regularly search using Google's voice technology. I say "OK, Google," and it starts listening for my request, which it almost always understands correctly, and then it does what I've asked for: I get a list of search results, or it makes a calendar entry, or whatever. I wouldn't trust Google to translate Thai to English or vice versa just yet, I'm still better at that, even though my Thai is not great, but about three years ago, I was greatly impressed at Google's ability to to do immediate voice translation between languages. A visitor turned up with a Spanish friend. I don't speak Spanish at all, and he didn't speak any English. Out came my old Samsung Galaxy 6, and we opened Google translate. I spoke English and it immediately came back in Spanish. He replied in Spanish, and it immediately came back in English. I couldn't judge the quality of the translation, but we had an intelligent and varied conversation through my phone for about 30 minutes without any problems. As I said, I was impressed, and that was years ago. On the other hand, Google's Thai to English ability is pretty awful — I would never recommend that, although some of my nieces in Australia do chat with my friend Yo's eleven-year-old son Ea, and they say they get by OK using Google translate.
I'm sure that with more practice, Google will very quickly get better at Thai than I am. And then what?
___________________________________
My question
Is there anything that a machine cannot do better than a human being?
___________________________________
Reference
What I read
In case you are wondering, I really did have to read my chosen source three times before attempting to write the summary paragraph, which I managed to get down to 124 words this time. It's not very short, but it is within the strict 130 word limit.
ReplyDeleteIf you are writing a summary and are worried that you might go over the 130 word limit, don't try to count by hand. I copy the text, paste it into an empty Google Doc, select it all, and then run Google's Word Count tool on it. This tool is accessed from the Tools option on the menu bar at the top of Google Docs. When I check your summary paragraphs, I do the same. If Google reports 131 words or more, that's a problem.
If you go over the 130 word limit, you will get a zero grade for that part of your blog post responding to a recent news article. Sorry, but summarizing is an important skill in every academic area, and it's one we want to practice regularly, which is why I set the strict word limit to force you to make careful decisions about what ideas are important enough to include in your summary of the chosen source.
And in the summary here, I did copy and paste four words from my source, as you can see.
Delete