[svlug] GAC - New AI attempt

[Daevid Vincent]

Perhaps off topic, but I wonder if they used Linux for it, as it is
referenced below?

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http://www.mindpixel.com/?ref=6190

Article from wired:
"Chris McKinstry doesn't just want to pick your brain. He wants to harvest
it.

With the facts he finds inside you, McKinstry will produce the "ultimate
average person." And then he'll rent out this fellow -- to do your thinking
for you.
If all this sounds more like science fiction than science fact, it isn't.
McKinstry, a computer scientist and an artificial intelligence expert, has
embarked on a groundbreaking artificial intelligence project that aims to
leverage the mind power of millions of Web surfers to teach a computer to
approximate human thought.

The computer is called GAC, which stands for General Artificial
Consciousness. McKinstry's aim is no less than to create an artificially
conscious being -- a computer that can independently think human thoughts.

GAC (pronounced "Jack"), went online a month ago at McKinstry's Mindpixel
Digital Mind Modeling Project website and is just an infant.

But the computer will learn to act human in the same manner that a human
baby learns, McKinstry said, by examining the world around it.

GAC's world is the World Wide Web. The more people who talk to the baby at
his website, the faster GAC will learn about the world, and the sooner he'll
be able to achieve consciousness.

In other words, GAC needs you. Or, more accurately, he needs your
"mindpixels."

McKinstry coined the term to describe what he calls the "minimum intelligent
signal" of the human mind. Basically, a mindpixel is a true-false statement
that will be answered the same way by all human beings.

The sky is blue is an example of a basic mindpixel, as most people ill
respond to the statement affirmatively. But mindpixels need not necessarily
be so general, McKinstry said.

Indeed, for GAC to act truly human, it needs to know everything the average
human being knows, and these facts are generally more specific than the
color of the sky.

Some other examples of mindpixels include:

Cows are milk-producing animals. TRUE.

Linux is a computer operating system. TRUE.

Britney Spears is known to be an expert on semiconductor physics. FALSE.

McKinstry wants real human beings to go to GAC's site and enter in any
mindpixels they can think of. Visitors to the site are also asked to answer
"true" or "false" to mindpixels that others have entered into the system.

In this fashion, McKinstry said, GAC learns both the basic questions
necessary to human existence, and the consensus answers to those questions.
More simply, GAC learns about the world.

But where, in this soup of true and false statements, will we find GAC's
humanity? "