IS YOUR COMPUTER SMARTER THAN YOU?

In the 1980s I was taking a programming class. One of the students asked the teacher how smart computers were. She said, they have an IQ of about 1. After all, computers don't know anything until some human being puts the data in. If the programmer didn't give the instructions correctly, the dumb machine could not use its own judgment to correct the process.

Well, a lot has changed in the last 30 years. Computers have more memory, faster processors, more storage capacity, and they also have access to the internet, which they didn't have 30 years ago. Not only do they have great capacity, but computers are capable of learning new things through a technology called machine learning.

If you're not sure how to spell Constantinople, your computer will tell you. And don’t even think about matching your number crunching skills with a computer, but these machines can do a lot more sophisticated stuff than spelling and arithmetic. Way back in 1997 an IBM computer named Deep Blue beat chess champion Garry Kasparov in a match. In 2011 a new IBM supercomputer, Watson, beat two Jeopardy champions at their game. Technicians had been feeding data to Watson for months, but the machine was not connected to the internet for the contest. It beat the champions with information it held within itself.

Now Watson is being fed medical information. IBM sees Dr. Watson as a tool that can help human physicians. Medical computers can diagnose illnesses better than humans can. For one thing, the machines can hold a lot more information than any human can. Also even the best of us have our prejudices which inform our judgments. Computers are free from prejudice and other forms of intellectual limitations that all of us mere humans have.

Computers can do more than just act as medical assistants. In 2001 robots beat human beings in simulated financial trading competition. Machines can even write financial reports and real estate analyses. They can generate news articles or sports reports based on statistical data from games. They can write in English, Spanish, French or German.

A company called Yseop (pronounced Easy Op) uses artificial intelligence to help its business customers boost revenue, reduce, costs, and increase productivity. The company’s software enables it to speak intelligently to customers. By the year 2020, Yseop believes, every computer, smart phone, and tablet will be a smart machine, able to reason, dialog intelligently, and express conclusions and recommendations in natural language. Yseop’s mission is to turn every computer into a smart machine that partners with people to increase their capacity and performance.

Not only are modern computers pretty smart, but individual machines get even more intelligent through machine learning. I will take a look at machine learning next week.

The computer on which I compiled this blog is far from being a top-of-the-line, newest machine. I bought it about five years ago for $300. I think I’m smarter than this machine, but I’ve been wrong about my own capabilities before. I’m planning to get a new computer within the next year. Will I be smarter than the new machine? I wouldn’t bet on it.