Edge 250
Posted on Thursday, July 17, 2008
Alan Turing's suggestion, to build a disorganized machine with the curiosity of a child, made more sense. Eventually, "interference would no longer be necessary, and the machine would have ‘grown up’." This was Google's approach. Harvest all the data in the world, rendering all available answers accessible to all possible questions, and then reinforce the meaningful associations while letting the meaningless ones die out. Since, by diagonal argument in the scale of possible infinities, there will always be more questions than answers, it is better to start by collecting the answers, and then find the questions, rather than the other way around.And why trace the connections in the brain of one individual when you can trace the connections in the mind of the entire species at once? Are we searching Google, or is Google searching us?
More at 'Engineer's Dreams' by George Dyson (Edge 250)