Science 'Eureka machine' puts scientists in the shade by working out laws of nature

[panzerfaust]

Source: Guardian (UK)

The machine, which took only a few hours to come up with Newton's laws of motion, marks a turning point in the way science is done ...

Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2009/apr/02/eureka-laws-nature-artificial-intelligence-ai

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Amazing.

Rise of the machines?

[shadowknows69]

1. Unplug the fucker now!!!

We'll all be wired into the Matrix within a year.

[Prophet 451]

42. Who says we already aren't?

OOOOOoooooOOOOOO....

[shadowknows69]

44. I'd hope my life would be cooler

I'd sell out humanity to be "someone important; maybe an actor".


The red pill sucks.

[Prophet 451]

45. They tried that

Remember, the first incarnation of the matrix was a perfect world, our minds couldn't accept it.

Incidently, I am planning a tattoo on my back of the phrase "I took the red pill", translated into binary and swirled into a DNA-style helix with the digits for "red" picked out in red ink.

[Birthmark]

2. You just *know* that the answer is gonna be 42

No way around it.

[dbt]

3. And it might even give us

THE QUESTION!!!!1!

:bounce:

[SpiralHawk]

13. THE quesion: What's it all mean, Mr. Natural?

[Karenina]

19. Answer: Don't mean shit.

[dbt]

24. What if it means "The avalanche has begun,

it is too late for the pebbles to vote?"

Do the names Adam and Eve scare anyone else? Why am I suddenly hearing The Doors?

:freak:

[dipsydoodle]

4. Maybe it will figure

why chewing gum loses its flavour on the bedpost overnight.

[IADEMO2004]

7. I just fell about 50 years back in time

for an earworm implant

[dipsydoodle]

34. I assume you meant this

which even I didn't know managed get on Billboard given that Lonnie, RIP, was UK. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXp0i7Y1eVo

[IADEMO2004]

39. My grandfather had the 45 rpm and we played it until it drove him out of his house

My sisters and cousins would have all been less than 10 years old then.

[Seldona]

5. Amazing imo.

If this works as advertised, it could be one of the greatest inventions ever, having profound effects on nearly every field of scientific study.

Just leave the damn thing off the internet please. lol

[rambler_american]

6. Ask if there is a god

and the answer will be:
There is, now.

[shadowknows69]

9. DUzy!

[TechBear_Seattle]

17. The question that needs to be asked is...

"How can the net entropy of the universe be reversed?"

Read The Last Question by Isaac Asimov :hi:

[jus_the_facts]

18. One of my favorite short stories from his Genius....

...."Let There Be Light!" :fistbump:

[tavalon]

22. Oh, great! Now, we're the entropy of the universe?

I thought the net was just a great way to waste hours upon hours of my life.

[moggie]

32. Fredric Brown

Though the actual quote is "Yes, now there is a God."

[rambler_american]

8. This may have very serious implications for the human race.

Within thirty years, we will have the technological means to create superhuman intelligence. Shortly after, the human era will be ended.
http://mindstalk.net/vinge/vinge-sing.html

For the last hundred thousand years, humans have been the smartest intelligences on the planet. All our social and technological progress was produced by human brains. Shortly, technology will advance to the point of improving on human intelligence (brain-computer interfaces, Artificial Intelligence). This will create a future that is weirder by far than most science fiction, a difference-in-kind that goes beyond amazing shiny gadgets.
# Strong claim: To know what a superhuman intelligence would do, you would have to be at least that smart yourself. To know where Deep Blue would play in a chess game, you must play at Deep Blue’s level. Thus the future after the creation of smarter-than-human intelligence is absolutely unpredictable.

http://www.singinst.org/blog/2007/09/30/three-major-singularity-schools/#more-70

[shadowknows69]

11. Did none of these scientists watch Battlestar Galactica? Particularly the final scene?

[tavalon]

23. spoiler alert

Some of us haven't seen the last few episodes of BG!

[shadowknows69]

35. sorry, didn't give much away did I?

I meant the whole, we create AI and enslave it. Eventually it gets pissed and destroys us.

[Soylent Brice]

10. why am i so excited about the possibility of a robotic apocalypse?

K&R

[shadowknows69]

12. I'm a sucker for watching my favorite books and movies come true too.

Although I wish I didn't have such depressing tastes in entertainment.

[Soylent Brice]

27. people always claim the same thing about my taste too.

i don't see the depressing aspect about it though. robots and AI machines taking over doesn't seem depressing at all. at least we would be ruled by logic instead of fear.

[shadowknows69]

36. Love that you've got a pic of "12 Monkeys" BTW

Speaking of cheery fictional futures lol.

[Soylent Brice]

40. thanks!

it was the inspiration for my first tattoo also. i have the barcode tattoo with no numbers on the back of my neck.

and believe it or not is has yet to be a hinderance in job opportunities in the decade i've had it now. i've worked for a major trucking company in an upper level mgmt position, clear channel, and i'm now employed at a major university.

i'm doing my best to break the stereotype of those with "non-normal" tattooing. besides, it's always been a great conversation starter. gives me a chance to rant about how we're all sheep. lol

[shadowknows69]

43. Love it. CC "The Evil Empire" huh? That's what us smaller radio people called it anyway.

[Soylent Brice]

46. EE exactly!!

[Blue_Tires]

49. because you think you'll be spared?

or maybe you're the type who would sell us all out and help the bots wipe out humanity...:scared: :hide: :crazy: :silly:

[caraher]

14. Cool. But scientists are not going out of business

Not before machines like this start asking questions rather than answering them

[NashVegas]

25. Real Scientists Have Been Out of Business For a Long Time

The people in the white coats today are all lab assistants for global capitalists.

[caraher]

56. Know any scientists?

Some may be corporate drones, but not the ones I know. Stereotyping is rarely helpful.

[Are_grits_groceries]

15. We already know the answer.

42

They need to observe the Taliban and that area and fill in a lot of data. If it can do social constructs, it may be able to predict patterns that haven't been noticed yet.

[Occulus]

30. And we shall name it

Hari Seldon.

[Giant Robot]

16. Gosh maybe we can name the machine

Skynet and just get it over with.

How long til the machine learns that humans are the problem?

[Hugin]

21. Shhh... It might be listening.

Uh, I'm gonna go check and see if there's any open mine space nearby... Maybe an old abandoned missile silo?

:hi:

[Giant Robot]

33. Sure it starts with the machine distilling a few simple

scientific laws and hypotheses.

And ends with Arnold Schwarzenegger knocking on your door saying, "Sarah Connor?"

[Blue_Tires]

51. it can also read lips like HAL-9000

[Bill McBlueState]

20. Now they just need to give it $10,000 a year,

make it pay half of that back in fees and health insurance, and it will be just like a graduate student.

[TechBear_Seattle]

28. DUzy alert!

:toast:

[NashVegas]

26. Duplicate Story

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x3812594

[unblock]

29. news articles like this always miss a few key points.

for instance, it's one thing to analyze relevant data and distill the correct few, simple laws that explain 99.9% of the observations.

it's a whole nother thing entirely to separate the relevant data from the massive amount of irrelevant data in the first place, and also to have the realization that there ARE a few, simple laws that explain 99.9% of the observations.


yes, the brute-force portion of discovery can be handed over to machines, but that's already been happening ever since computers were invented. but there will always be a role for imagination and direction, and this experiment hasn't changed that.

[Lionel Mandrake]

54. For example, the fact that AI is almost pure hype.

There are some things that humans do well and computers can't do worth shit:
1. Pattern recognition in a noisy environment;
2. Translation from one natural language to another.

There are other things that humans and computers both do well, but not the same way:
1. Playing chess;
2. Running an obstacle course.

"Artificial Intelligence" has been just around the corner since the 1960s. There have been no real breakthroughs in AI, just incremental improvements in brute force computation, due mainly to better hardware.

Forget about HAL and the Terminator. They won't be with us for a long time, if ever.

[Blue_Tires]

31. HEY GUYS I DIVIDED BY ZERO

OH SHIT!

[slackmaster]

37. How long will it be before the rest of us simply "get in the way"?

:scared:

[Blue_Tires]

50. we won't be in the way...

the machines will need us for fuel, like in the matrix!

[MetaTrope]

38. This Hod Lipson almost sounds like an April Fool's joke

But the guy's been coming up with amazing devices for a few years now. Check out this: http://www.popsci.com/scitech/article/2007-05/desktop-factory

[Prophet 451]

41. Hello Skynet!

May I welcome our benevolent robot overlords? Did I say "overlords"? I meant "protectors".

[daleo]

47. Rudy Rucker's "Infinity and the Mind" talks about this sort of thing

We can rest somewhat easy, as a variation of Godels Incompleteness Theorem pretty well eliminates the possibility of a "Universal Truth Machine". At least that's my take on the book, which is well worth reading.

[NashVegas]

52. So Does Bill Joy's "The Future Doesn't Need Us"

[damntexdem]

48. Well, there goes graduate science education.

No need to turn out physicists any more -- just build more machines.

When are they going to come up with one to replace economists? Oh wait, they have one: a random-number generator. ;-)

[Posteritatis]

53. LOL at all the paranoid luddites thinking bad movies are documentaries (nt)

[Danascot]

55. The Hokey-Pokey

That's what it's all about.

Actually this is an amazing development.