The Computational Universe

Growing up, I always thought artificial intelligence was a very real possibility. In fact, I was surprised that androids did not already walk among us. It seemed probable enough. After all, artificial intelligence existed on television, why not in real life? As I grew older, however, I began to realize the difficulties prohibiting this technology from coming into existence at the time being, but thought it may happen in the future. After taking this course, I have come to believe that artificial intelligence will never be possible. I do not think that Searle’s belief about the Turing test is correct. While I do think that a machine could be built that perfectly mimics human beings, it can never truly be intelligent. No matter how well the machine performs operations to act like a human mind, it will never amount to anything more than that – a machine performing steps to produce the “right” response. In this case, the machine may be able to pass the Turing test, but would not qualify as intelligent. A computer cannot understand why it is doing the things it does, it merely processes inputs performs calculations. For a machine to be truly conscious, I feel, it must be able to understand that it is in existence. It is for this reason that I reject Brooks’ view and believe that artificial intelligence will never exist. As advanced as the machines and programs become, they will never be able to duplicate the human mind.

As I can see from my fellow classmates’ blog entries, I was not the only one who felt as though they did not understand a great deal of what Tim Berners-Lee was talking about. I feel as though he could have made more of an impact if he had catered his speech more toward a relatively lay audience. However, I understand that such a request is difficult to fulfill given the highly technological topic. And who am I to judge? I mean the man did create the World Wide Web…

Confusion aside, I thought it was a very interesting talk. For me, the most amazing part was getting to see the person responsible for technology that so directly affects my daily life! Of the very limited things I could understand from the discussion, I found a few of the concepts highly fascinating. Mr. Berners-Lee’s thoughts about the future of the web were what I came away from the talk thinking about. The web already seemed so highly advanced to me. I thought boolean logic and search engines were unbelievable; now I can see that was only the beginning.

What struck me as most intriguing was Berners-Lee’s focus on Internet responsibility. At first, I thought this odd. Why would a man who had created something so astounding want to place limits on his creation? After turning this question over in my brain, however, the answer became utterly apparent. Tim Berners-Lee is a bit like Doctor Frankenstein: he is a man who has pioneered the unimaginable. Unlike the mad doctor, however, Berners-Lee realizes the ramifications of unleashing a potential monster on society.

I knew very little about computer science before taking this class. I, like many others, was under the impression that all computer programs were incredibly complex. Even though I was sort of familiar with the concept of binary code, I never imagined a program that manipulates a simple series of zeros and ones could be so powerful. It basically consists of an endless tape containing a set of zeros and ones. A finite set of instructions tells the program where to start and how to respond to the numbers it scans. At first, the program seems unimpressive; the concept of replacing a zero with a one or a one with a zero does not exactly inspire awe. Yet Turing-Post programs are ingenious in their simplicity. I mean, it’s astounding when you realize that they can run any other program ever invented.

The invention of the Turing machine was a momentous occasion in the advancement of computer science; the program has become an integral part of modern computing methods. The Turing-Post program is not without its flaws, however. The most glaring problem is the fact that the program cannot make rational decisions as humans do. When applied to real-world situations, the program cannot think or make judgments – it can only do what is has been instructed to. Another drawback is the halting problem. We cannot know before the program is running if it will halt at some point during the process. Even with these drawbacks, it is obvious that the Turing model has changed the way the world operates. Everything from the World Wide Web to sending coded military messages would be unimaginable without the brilliance of the Turing-Post program.

Hey everyone. My name is Jay Chancellor and I am a freshman in Butler College. I was planning on majoring in Economics, but I’m so bad with math that even the simple prerequisite calculus classes were too difficult for me. Now I’m planning on majoring in the Woodrow Wilson School (if I can get in) or maybe politics. I would also like to study abroad in South Africa and learn how to speak Arabic before I graduate.

I’m originally from St. Louis, Missouri, but I’ve lived in Maryland for almost my entire life. As a Marylander, I love to sail and play lacrosse. I’m torn right now between playing club lacrosse, joining the sailing team, and playing rugby. All three are spring sports, so I can only choose one. Right now I play on the club ice hockey team and we’ve been doing pretty well. We’ll be playing in the conference playoffs and we’ve made it to national playoffs for the first time ever.

I am taking this class because I am nearly incompetent when it comes to computers. Somehow, I managed to understand the Unix operating system for my job working with the Department of the Navy. It was a big change from the Mac OS I’m used to on my PowerBook. Hopefully, “The Computational Universe” will be able to help me better my understanding of something that is so very important in today’s high-tech world. Although I didn’t realize it when I signed up for the class, I am very excited to get a robot for the semester; hopefully I can teach it to bring me drinks and stuff. It’s probably the closest thing I’ll ever get to a monkey butler…

Update 9:20pm on 2/10/06: I modified the original post to include the kind of computer I use most often and tell a little about my past experience with computers in the workplace.