[ExI] online resources for identifying symbols

spike spike66 at att.net
Thu Dec 12 06:48:05 UTC 2013


 

 

From: spike [mailto:spike66 at att.net] 
.

 
>.I fooled around with Google Images doing stuff like giving it only this
jpg:
 
>. And it came back with this:
 

>.Best guess for this image:
<https://encrypted.google.com/search?sa=G&q=drunk+cow&ei=cdWoUoWwFZWFoQS6kIH
YBA&ved=0CCYQvQ4oAA> drunk cow

 

>.spike

 

 

OK this really has my wheels spinning.  Think about this, you guys who have
been hanging around here for a long time.  Remember when we were discussing
someone secretly using a computer hidden on their body somehow to cheat in a
chess tournament?  OK well that has been done now, but it was lower tech
than we thought.  The player is  Bulgarian Borislav Ivanov.  He had an
iPhone in his shoe and was tapping out the moves with his toe.

 

But this whole cow image bit really has me thinking about another topic we
were discussing perhaps a decade ago: alternative models for the hard
takeoff singularity, or lower case s singularity some were calling it.  The
notion is that software would gradually just get better at human-like stuff
gradually, and be better than humans at some things a long time before other
things.  

 

This is analogous to computer chess in a way.  A long time ago, computers
could play a good game at the really fast speeds and in open positions.  So
a human could beat a computer for a long time if the human would play into
super-closed positions with lots of blocked pawns and long pawn chains.  So
computers gradually got better, but for a long time, you could beat one if
you knew how to play its weaknesses, but if it managed to tear open the
position, forget it, you might as well climb in the coffin and pull the lid
shut behind you.

 

OK then.  We have software that recognizes a cow and that it is an odd
perspective.  I found that response of Drunk Cow as hilarious, but it makes
sense.

 

I gave Google Images a photo of world fourth ranked chess player Kramnik,
Google figured out it was a chess player and found other pictures of him
including the one I pasted in, but didn't actually figure out who it was.
Remarkable!

 

This is a form of artificial intelligence we might suppose, even though it
is code that we can comprehend.

 

This whole thing again has me thinking about singularity scenarios where
software surpasses human abilities in a lot of areas but the big S
Singularity still doesn't happen.

 

Is this a great time to be alive or what?

 

spike

 

 

 

 

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