[ExI] Whistling past the graveyard

[John Clark]

​Back in 1997 when a computer beat the world Chess champion ​Piet Hut, an
astrophysicist at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton said "It
may be a hundred years before a computer beats humans at Go — maybe even
longer. If a reasonably intelligent person learned to play Go, in a few
months he could beat all existing computer programs. You don’t have to be a
Kasparov”. About the same time science writer George Johnson said "Defeating
a human Go champion will be a sign that artificial intelligence is truly
beginning to become as good as the real thing.”  But in today's new York
Times Johnson says "That doesn’t seem so true anymore", and then in a orgie
of sour grapes goes on to list the things that computers still aren't good
at and to claim that the things they are good at is a testament to the
genius of the computer's teachers not of the computer itself, so it's not
really a big deal. It just shows what I've been saying, the goal post is
always moving and true intelligence is whatever a computer isn't good at,
YET.

 John K Clark
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