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Computers are getting smarter. They can do many stuff faster than humans. They can even detect sarcasm. But do they "understand" it? Can Computers understand a
by knowThySelfx 9y ago
Computers are getting smarter. They can do many stuff faster than humans. They can even detect sarcasm. But do they "understand" it? Can Computers understand a subtle joke? Maybe we could train a Computer to detect jokes and make it laugh, but can it really understand a joke?
Interesting topic.
- knome 9y agoComputers will understand language like boats swim.
- tinymollusk 9y agoWe live in such interesting times! Any criteria we can come up with for computers would then need to be applied to people. But how could we do that, when humans answer questions so differently? Do we ask one human? A sample of humans? All humans? I don't think we'll find a criteria that delineates computers' "understanding" from our own. Perhaps the regularity from a sample of computers would be an indication. All this is to say, what makes us think that humans understand subtle jokes?
- knowThySelfx 9y agoIt is all context oriented. Lets see how these things develop. Lets ask a computer who just laughed at a joke "Why did you laugh? Or what made you laugh? Or Why did you find it funny?", and see what replies we get :D
- JetSpiegel 9y ago"I laughed because 'jmp 0xdeadbeef' leads to the sound playing routine"
- knowThySelfx 9y agomoo
- dmichulke 9y ago"- .. what a funny compiler!"
- MaxBarraclough 9y agoWhat does 'understand' mean, if not something functional? You mean consciousness? Tough question to answer. Are you familiar with Daniel Dennett's 'Competence without comprehension' ideas? He points out for instance that even a very simple computer is far better at division and exponentiation than even the smartest human. It does this without any comprehension at all - a pocket calculator is far too simple to have any meaningful understanding of anything, but that has zero impact on its functional usefulness. Another favourite example of his is evolution by natural selection. Annoyingly I couldn't find a brief online article on the topic by the man himself.
- knowThySelfx 9y agoYeah I had consciousness in mind.