Movie: Ex Machina

There you go.

Sadly, the affection was not returned.

You need to try a SoniCare sometime. Seriously.

In my case, that would be a waste of money. Seriously.

It would be nice to hear the reasoning behind the estimates.
The chart shows it would take one hundred years more for an AI researcher's tasks to be mechanized  than for a surgeon's? I wonder how the numbers would be if surgeons had taken the survey instead of AI researchers.
Cum grano salis

The blobs for the medians are consistently nearer the low end of their respective ranges. I wonder how the estimates are distributed in the range, reasonably well-clustered or actually all over the place. I suppose some form of Poisson distribution is to be expected.

Quote :

While North American researchers expect AI to outperform humans at everything in 74 years, researchers from Asia expect it in just 30 years.

I think use of the word "everything" is a bit of smoke up everyone's ass, but certainly many expert systems exceed human capacity already today, and the list of computer superiorities is growing every day. I personally expect the Turing Test to be aced by an AI by about 2022 (five years).

I think the last bastions of human superiority will be in creativity, unpredictability, art, revenge & vindictiveness, paradigm-busting, heartbreak and insanity. Some things we're just inherently better at.

Paradigm is one of the words which I have quit using because it is now almost always misused, so I can't be sure that someone I am talking to will understand what I mean. The same is true for unique, decimate, and others.

What do you mean by "paradigm-busting"?

_Howard wrote:

What  do you mean by "paradigm-busting"?

The iPhone.

Nobody envisioned a handheld device that could make phone calls, exchange emails, navigate, play games, take pictures, pay bills, watch movies, and so forth. Such creative, radical thinking -- not just improving existing products, but imagining whole new classes of product -- is so far a uniquely human trait.

And only a FEW humans at that.

How about a definition of the phrase.

A "paradigm" is an existing way of doing things, a set way of thinking, a comfortable complacency. It's a good word because there aren't really any good synonyms.

Music is another endeavor where computers are good at copying, but not so good at coming up with anything new and innovative. There are music composing programs, but they're as boring as most real composers.

NoCoPilot wrote:

A "paradigm" is an existing way of doing things, a set way of thinking, a comfortable complacency.  It's a good word because there aren't really any good synonyms.

I don't think "comfortable complacency" belongs there, but at any rate I know the meaning of paradigm. I have never heard the phrase "paradigm-busting". What do you mean by that?

(By the way: Apple did not invent the cell phone or the so-called smart phone.)

_Howard wrote:

What do you mean by "paradigm-busting"?

Something that busts a paradigm. Defies expectations. Explodes anticipations. Surprises followers. Makes a quick left turn. Jumps the shark. Screws the pooch. Bakes the eel. Pops the weasel.

Okay, I may have made a few of those up.

_Howard wrote:

now almost always misused, so I can't be sure that someone I am talking to will understand what I mean. The same is true for unique, decimate, and others.

"Decimate" technically means to kill every tenth member of a battalion as punishment for poor performance, does it not? It is conventionally used now to mean "wiping out a large portion of something", often much more than 10% (the origin of the "deci" in decimate).

"Unique" literally means singular, one-of-a-kind, the only one like it. It is often misused as a kind of fake compliment, as in "the 2017 Volvo has unique styling." Well yes, it is the only 2017 Volvo but it looks a lot like every other 2017 mid-range sedan.

My pet peeve is "literally." It makes my head literally explode when people misuse it.

_Howard wrote:

(By the way: Apple did not invent the cell phone or the so-called smart phone.)

Are you talking PDAs? They're not the same thing.

Wikipedia wrote:

• The Ericsson R380 (2000) by Ericsson Mobile Communications.[15] The first device marketed as a "smartphone",[16] it combined the functions of a mobile phone and PDA, and supported limited Web browsing with a resistive touchscreen utilizing a stylus.[17]
  
• The Kyocera 6035 (early 2001) introduced by Palm, Inc. Combining a PDA with a mobile phone, it operated on the Verizon network, and supported limited Web browsing.[18][19]
  
• Handspring's Treo 180 (2002), the first smartphone to combine the Palm OS and a GSM phone with telephony, SMS messaging and Internet access fully integrated into the OS.[20]

The consensus online appears to be that a PDA + phone does not equal a true "smartphone". Most sources give that honor to Apple.

Snugg wrote:

In the later part of the 1990s, many mobile phone users began carrying PDAs (personal digital assistants). Early PDAs ran on various systems such as Blackberry OS, and Palm OS. Nokia released a phone combined with a PDA in 1996. The device was called the Nokia 9000. In 1999, a smartphone was released by Qualcomm. The pdQ smartphone, as it was called, featured a Palm PDA with internet connectivity capabilities. Smartphone technology continued to advance throughout the early 2000s. These advances in technology brought about the introduction of the iPhone, the Android operating system and more.

Brief History of Smartphones

2007

January - Steve Jobs of Apple introduces the iPhone which he refers to as a "revolutionary and magical product."

PocketNow wrote:

First, what is a smartphone? Turns out, the actual definition, no matter the source, is quite vague. Merriam-Webster concisely calls a smartphone “a cell phone that includes additional software functions (as e-mail or an Internet browser).” Oxford Dictionaries, on the other hand, gets a little more precise by saying a smartphone “is able to perform many of the functions of a computer, typically having a relatively large screen and an operating system capable of running general-purpose applications.”

Either way, there is a fine line between what is and isn’t a smartphone these days, even if the so-called “dumb” or “regular” phones can perform many of the same functions. Even the cheapest, low-end smartphones are distinctly different from their non-smart counterparts.

NoCoPilot wrote:

"Decimate" technically means to kill every tenth member of a battalion as punishment for poor performance, does it not?

It just meant to kill every tenth person. It does not indicate a reason.

NoCoPilot wrote:

 It is conventionally used now to mean "wiping out a large portion of something", often much more than 10% (the origin of the "deci" in decimate).

It has become accepted to use the word to describe a large loss of life. That is animal life only; it is not proper to use for the loss of fauna. The one that continues to haunt me was by one of those blow-dried newscasters reporting on damage from a large storm: "Half of the city was decimated." Arrrrggh!

NoCoPilot wrote:

Brief History of Smartphones
2007

January - Steve Jobs of Apple introduces the iPhone which he refers to as a "revolutionary and magical product."

In 2003, the more commonly known convergent smartphone BlackBerry was released, which supports push email, mobile telephone, text messaging, Internet faxing, Web browsing and other wireless information services.

It's a fuzzy definition, so I'll give you the shitty overhyped POS Blackberry.

At the hospital where I worked, every single doctor turned in their Blackberriy when the iPhone was approved for use. We also got in a hundred Microsoft mobile phones when they were released. Twenty of them were defective out of the box. The other eighty were turned in within a month as "thanks but no thanks."

Yes, the Blackberry could be considered a POS today. But not in 2003.

The first few iPhone releases would be POS today.

I'm will venture the guess that today's astronauts consider the Apollo 11 a POS.

Yeah, tech generally gets better with time.

Incrementally in the case of Research In Motion.  Revolutionary ("paradigm busting") in the case of Apple.

Research In Motion created the first device that could be called a smart phone. Apple improved on it. Yet you give Apple the "revolutionary" credit, while demeaning the work of RIM.

You and I will never agree about the accomplishments of Apple. As well as I can recall, Apple has never invented anything, unless you want to consider the original Apple computer from Wozniak (and the only cult following in tech). They have certainly never created anything that I would consider revolutionary.

I have owned both a Blackberry and an iPhone. I stand by my characterization.

Well, I may reconsider my opinion if you can ever come up with something original from Apple.

Good luck with that.

Edison didn't invent the lightbulb either. But he made it work reliably.

Sometimes "improving on" an idea brings it from theory into reality.