have a computer ever made to think?... i marvel at IBM's watson and chess computers....

Question

anonymous · Answer

have a computer ever been made to think?... i marvel at IBM's watson and chess computers....

anonymous · Answer

It depends on what you mean by "think".  Chess programs usually take the current state of the board and play it out hypothetically several moves ahead, giving weight to the state of those future boards and then choosing the best one.  Is this thinking?  Watson has a strong natural language parser that lets it determine a question's meaning and then cross-references that meaning with a gigantic database, assigning probabilities to possible answers. Is that thinking?  Other programs are built with an algorithm that allow them to improve their method of solving a problem the more input they are given and the more times they are run, which means that in essence, these programs are "learning".  Is that thinking?

I would say no.  Computers can simulate thought, but they're still bound to their programming to produce certain output given input.  On the other hand, maybe humans are the same way, and what we think of as thought is just a very very sophisticated program in our heads.

anonymous · Answer

:) interesting answer

phi · Answer

See http://www.loebner.net/Prizef/loebner-prize.html where people compete to pass the "turing test". So far, no one is claiming their program thinks.

anonymous · Answer

Computers do not think.  They just select the difference of two voltages.  If voltage A>B, the computer will do something.  If voltage B>A, the computer will do something else.  Otherwise, the computer will do nothing.