On Thu, 28 Feb 2008 13:57:07 -0500, Wayne.B
wrote:

On Thu, 28 Feb 2008 09:36:34 -0800 (PST), jamesgangnc
wrote:

Seems we seldom have more than one or two boating topics a day
anyway. But hope springs eternal!

And spring is right around the corner for you high latitude folks. It
was in the 80s here last week but a chilly 40 something this morning.
Hopefully the pool will warm up by late afternoon.

Back to computers: Read up on "the Turing Test" for some fresh
insights:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_test

As you can see, this discussion has been going on for a long time. I
would postulate that Kasparov's automated opponent has already passed
the test within its limited realm. At some point, and it may have
already started, computers will be expertly programmed to simulate
feelings, emotion and creative thought. When the simulations become
so well done that world class experts can't tell the difference, what
do you have then?

Years ago, the Scifi channel of all entities, had a software robot
named Yotz that used to roam around it's chat channels and converse
with participants. Yotz became very sophisticated in it's responses
to questions and would pick up on conversations when it entered a room
and make comments on the commentary.

It's was interesting to watch Yotz over the early years "learn" it's
responses, but it never became really spontaneous unless you asked it
something directly. They tried to get it to respond to general
commentary, but it never could quite get there.

Newbies used to get ****ed off at Yotz becaue they never knew that
Yotz wasn't capable of dealing with just general stuff unless you
asked it directly.

I never quite decided if that was smart on Yotz's part or not. :)