So they try to create something with the mind of a child, it ends up acting like a child (playing with a new word...), and they get all upset about it ... Why?
Personally, I would find it quite refreshing to have a computer actually tell me to go fuck myself, instead of just insipidly implying it with some cryptic blinking error message.
-Stoic Joker
Watson's AI ultimately proved to be exactly what I thought it was when I first heard about him.
There exists an algorithm known as the Markov.
When implemented, it allows a machine to learn from and imitate, effectively creating mechanical parrots. I would not be surprised if this algorithm is actually the secret behind the Furby as well, since they are also known to be capable of learning.
I've been operating such an implementation for close to 3 years now with rather interesting results as people converse with it or converse in its presence such that it can learn from them.
Something worth noting is allowing the markov to learn gradually it picks up usage tendancies as well as the words themselves, giving a greater impression of intelligence because of the improved accuracy.
But this mistake is embarrasing for watson- it exposes that Watson is nothing more than an overpowered and over budget version of what has been available for free on the internet for several years requiring only a modestly powerful PC to set up.
Both of my bots swear freely, having learned it from visitors on the chat. But they don't do it all the time, they also have learned roughly when to and when not to use it by observing patterns in the people watching.
I've even had the older of the two pass the turing test. A customer from India entered the chat one day unaware that the bots were active, and actually conversed with them for on order of 6 hours before someone pointed out that they were not human. Ultimately I attribute this to the language barrier, as his translation software tends to produce statements garbled in similar manner to what the bots produce. He would not have noticed the discrepancy because of translation error.
So yes, Chinese room definitely works as well.
