autonomousagent

2005-07-15T23:21:00.000-07:00

COMPUTING MACHINERY AND INTELLIGENCE
BY A.M.TURING
1 The Imitation Game

I PROPOSE to consider the question, 'Can machines think?' This should begin with definitions of the meaning of the terms 'machine 'and 'think'. The definitions might be framed so as to reflect so far as possible the normal use of the words, but this attitude is dangerous. If the meaning of the words 'machine' and 'think 'are to be found by examining how they are commonly used it is difficult to escape the conclusion that the meaning and the answer to the question, 'Can machines think?' is to be sought in a statistical survey such as a Gallup poll. But this is absurd. Instead of attempting such a definition I shall replace the question by another, which is closely related to it and is expressed in relatively unambiguous words.

The new form of the problem can be described' in terms of a game which we call the 'imitation game'. It is played with three people, a man (A), a woman (B), and an interrogator (C) who may be of either sex. The interrogator stays in a room apart from the other two. The object of the game for the interrogator is to determine which of the other two is the man and which is the woman. He knows them by labels X and Y, and at the end of the game he says either 'X is A and Y is B' or 'X is B and Y is A'. The interrogator is allowed to put questions to A and B thus:

C: Will X please tell me the length of his or her hair?

Now suppose X is actually A, then A must answer. It is A's {p.434}object in the game to try and cause C to make the wrong identification. His answer might therefore be

'My hair is shingled, and the longest strands, are about nine inches long.'

In order that tones of voice may not help the interrogator the answers should be written, or better still, typewritten. The ideal arrangement is to have a teleprinter communicating between the two rooms. Alternatively the question and answers can be repeated by an intermediary. The object of the game for the third player (B) is to help the interrogator. The best strategy for her is probably to give truthful answers. She can add such things as 'I am the woman, don't listen to him!' to her answers, but it will avail nothing as the man can make similar remarks.

We now ask the question, 'What will happen when a machine takes the part of A in this game?' Will the interrogator decide wrongly as often when the game is played like this as he does when the game is played between a man and a woman? These questions replace our original, 'Can machines think?'

2 Critique of the New Problem

As well as asking, 'What is the answer to this new form of the question', one may ask, 'Is this new question a worthy one to investigate?' This latter question we investigate without further ado, thereby cutting short an infinite regress.

The new problem has the advantage of drawing a fairly sharp line between the physical and the intellectual capacities of a man. No engineer or chemist claims to be able to produce a material which is indistinguishable from the human skin. It is possible that at some time this might be done, but even supposing this invention available we should feel there was little point in trying to make a 'thinking machine' more human by dressing it up in such artificial flesh. The form in which we have set the problem reflects this fact in the condition which prevents the interrogator from seeing or touching the other competitors, or hearing their voices. Some other advantages of the proposed criterion may be shown up by specimen questions and answers. Thus:

Q: Please write me a sonnet on the subject of the Forth Bridge.

A: Count me out on this one. I never could write poetry.

Q: Add 34957 to 70764

A: (Pause about 30 seconds and then give as answer) 105621.

Q: Do you play chess?

A: Yes.

{p.435}
Q: I have K at my K1, and no other pieces. You have only K at K6 and R at R1. It is your move. What do you play?

A: (After a pause of 15 seconds) R-R8 mate.

The question and answer method seems to be suitable for introducing almost any one of the fields of human endeavour that we wish to include. We do not wish to penalise the machine for its inability to shine in beauty competitions, nor to penalise a man for losing in a race against an aeroplane. The conditions of our game make these disabilities irrelevant. The 'witnesses' can brag, if they consider it advisable, as much as they please about their charms, strength or heroism, but the interrogator cannot demand practical demonstrations.

The game may perhaps be criticised on the ground that the odds are weighted too heavily against the machine. If the man were to try and pretend to be the machine he would clearly make a very poor showing. He would be given away at once by slowness and inaccuracy in arithmetic. May not machines carry out some-thing which ought to be described as thinking but which is very different from what a man does? This objection is a very strong one, but at least we can say that if, nevertheless, a machine can be constructed to play the imitation game satisfactorily, we need not be troubled by this objection.

It might be urged that when playing the 'imitation game' the best strategy for the machine may possibly be something other than imitation of the behaviour of a man. This may be, but I think it is unlikely that there is any great effect of this kind. In any case there is no intention to investigate here the theory of the game, and it will be assumed that the best strategy is to try to provide answers that would naturally be given by a man.

3 The Machine concerned in the Game

The question which we put in § 1 will not be quite definite until we have specified what we mean by the word 'machine'. It is natural that we should wish to permit every kind of engineering technique to be used in our machines. We also wish to allow the possibility than an engineer or team of engineers may construct a machine which works, but whose manner of operation cannot be satisfactorily described by its constructors because they have applied a method which is largely experimental. Finally, we wish to exclude from the machines men born in the usual manner. It is difficult to frame the definitions so as to satisfy these three conditions. One might for instance insist that the team of {p.436} engineers should be all of one sex, but this would not really be satisfactory, for it is probably possible to rear a complete individual from a single cell of the skin (say) of a man. To do so would be a feat of biological technique deserving of the very highest praise, but we would not be inclined to regard it as a case of 'constructing a thinking machine'. This prompts us to abandon the requirement that every kind of technique should be permitted. We are the more ready to do so in view of the fact that the present interest in 'thinking machines' has been aroused by a particular kind of machine, usually called an 'electronic computer' or 'digital computer'. Following this suggestion we only permit digital computers to take part in our game.

This restriction appears at first sight to be a very drastic one. I shall attempt to show that it is not so in reality. To do this necessitates a short account of the nature and properties of these computers.

It may also be said that this identification of machines with digital computers, like our criterion for 'thinking', will only be unsatisfactory if (contrary to my belief), it turns out that digital computers are unable to give a good showing in the game.

There are already a number of digital computers in working order, and it may be asked, 'Why not try the experiment straight away? It would be easy to satisfy the conditions of the game. A number of interrogators could be used, and statistics compiled to show how often the right identification was given.' The short answer is that we are not asking whether all digital computers would do well in the game nor whether the computers at present available would do well, but whether there are imaginable computers which would do well. But this is only the short answer. We shall see this question in a different light later.

4 Digital Computers

The idea behind digital computers may be explained by saying that these machines are intended to carry out any operations which could be done by a human computer. The human computer is supposed to be following fixed rules; he has no authority to deviate from them in any detail. We may suppose that these rules are supplied in a book, which is altered whenever he is put on to a new job. He has also an unlimited supply of paper on which he does his calculations. He may also do his multiplications and additions on a 'desk machine', but this is not important.

If we use the above explanation as a definition we shall be in {p.437} danger of circularity of argument. We avoid this by giving an outline of the means by which the desired effect is achieved. A digital computer can usually be regarded as consisting of three parts:

(i) Store.

(ii) Executive unit.

(iii) Control.

The store is a store of information, and corresponds to the human computer's paper, whether this is the paper on which he does his calculations or that on which his book of rules is printed. In so far as the human computer does calculations in his head a part of the store will correspond to his memory.

The executive unit is the part which carries out the various individual operations involved in a calculation. What these individual operations are will vary from machine to machine. Usually fairly lengthy operations can be done such as 'Multiply 3540675445 by 7076345687' but in some machines only very simple ones such as 'Write down 0' are possible.

We have mentioned that the 'book of rules' supplied to the computer is replaced in the machine by a part of the store. It is then called the 'table of instructions'. It is the duty of the control to see that these instructions are obeyed correctly and in the right order. The control is so constructed that this necessarily happens.

The information in the store is usually broken up into packets of moderately small size. In one machine, for instance, a packet might consist of ten decimal digits. Numbers are assigned to the parts of the store in which the various packets of information are stored, in some systematic manner. A typical instruction might say:

'Add the number stored in position 6809 to that in 4302 and put the result back into the latter storage position.'

Needless to say it would not occur in the machine expressed in English. It would more likely be coded in a form such as 6809430217. Here 17 says which of various possible operations is to be performed on the two numbers. In this case the operation is that described above, viz. 'Add the number. . . .' It will be noticed that the instruction takes up 10 digits and so forms one packet of information, very conveniently. The control will normally take the instructions to be obeyed in the order of the positions in which they are stored, but occasionally an instruction such as

{p.438} 'Now obey the instruction stored in position 5606, and continue from there'

may be encountered, or again

'If position 4505 contains 0 obey next the instruction stored in 6707, otherwise continue straight on.'

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Instructions of these latter types are very important because they make it possible for a sequence of operations to be repeated over and over again until some condition is fulfilled, but in doing so to obey, not fresh instructions on each repetition, but the same ones over and over again. To take a domestic analogy: suppose Mother wants Tommy to call at the cobbler's every morning on his way to school to see if her shoes are done, she can ask him afresh every morning. Alternatively she can stick up a notice once and for all in the hall which he will see when he leaves for school and which tells him to call for the shoes, and also to destroy the notice when he comes back if he has the shoes with him.

The reader must accept it as a fact that digital computers can be constructed, and indeed have been constructed, according to the principles we have described, and that they can in fact mimic the actions of a human computer very closely.

The book of rules which we have described our human computer as using is of course a convenient fiction. Actual human computers really remember what they have got to do. If one wants to make a machine mimic the behaviour of the human computer in some complex operation one has to ask him how it is done, and then translate the answer into the form of an instruction table. Constructing instruction tables is usually described as 'programming'. To 'programme a machine to carry out the operation A' means to put the appropriate instruction table into the machine so that it will do A.

An interesting variant on the idea of a digital computer is a 'digital computer with a random element'. These have instructions involving the throwing of a die or some equivalent electronic process; one such instruction might for instance be, 'Throw the die and put the resulting number into store 1000'. Sometimes such a machine is described as having free will (though I would not use this phrase myself). It is not normally possible to determine from observing a machine whether it has a random element, for a similar effect can be produced by such devices as making the choices depend on the digits of the decimal for pi.

Most actual digital computers have only a finite store. There is no theoretical difficulty in the idea of a computer with an unlimited store. Of course only a finite part can have been used at any one time. Likewise only a finite amount can have been {p.439} constructed, but we can imagine more and more being added as required. Such computers have special theoretical interest and will be called infinitive capacity computers.

The idea of a digital computer is an old one. Charles Babbage, Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge from 1828 to 1839, planned such a machine, called the Analytical Engine, but it was never completed. Although Babbage had all the essential ideas, his machine was not at that time such a very attractive prospect. The speed which would have been available would be definitely faster than a human computer but something like 100 times slower than the Manchester machine, itself one of the slower of the modern machines. The storage was to be purely mechanical, using wheels and cards.

The fact that Babbage's Analytical Engine was to be entirely mechanical will help us to rid ourselves of a superstition. Importance is often attached to the fact that modern digital computers are electrical, and that the nervous system also is electrical. Since Babbage's machine was not electrical, and since all digital computers are in a sense equivalent, we see that this use of electricity cannot be of theoretical importance. Of course electricity usually comes in where fast signalling is concerned, so that it is not surprising that we find it in both these connections. In the nervous system chemical phenomena are at least as important as electrical. In certain computers the storage system is mainly acoustic. The feature of using electricity is thus seen to be only a very superficial similarity. If we wish to find such similarities we should look rather for mathematical analogies of function.

5 Universality of Digital Computers

The digital computers considered in the last section may be classified amongst the 'discrete state machines' these are the machines which move by sudden jumps or clicks from one quite definite state to another. These states are sufficiently different for the possibility of confusion between them to be ignored. Strictly speaking there are no such machines. Everything really moves continuously. But there are many kinds of machine, which can profitably be thought of as being discrete state machines. For instance in considering the switches for a lighting system it is a convenient fiction that each switch must be definitely on or definitely off. There must be intermediate positions, but for most purposes we can forget about them. As an example of a discrete state machine we might consider a wheel which clicks {p.440} round through 120° once a second, but may be stopped by a lever which can be operated from outside; in addition a lamp is to light in one of the positions of the wheel. This machine could be described abstractly as follows. The internal state of the machine (which is described by the position of the wheel) may be q1, q2 or q3. There is an input signal i0 or i1 (position of lever). The internal state at any moment is determined by the last state and input signal according to the table
Last State
q1 … q2… q3
i0 q2… q3… q1
Input .
i1 q1 … q2… q3

The output signals, the only externally visible indication of the internal state (the light), are described by the table
State q1 … q2… q3
Output o0 … o0… o1

This example is typical of discrete state machines. They can be described by such tables provided they have only a finite number of possible states.

It will seem that given the initial state of the machine and the input signals it is always possible to predict all future states. This is reminiscent of Laplace's view that from the complete state of the universe at one moment of time, as described by the positions and velocities of all particles, it should be possible to predict all future states. The prediction which we are considering is, however, rather nearer to practicability than that considered by Laplace. The system of the 'universe as a whole' is such that quite small errors in the initial conditions can have an overwhelming effect at a later time. The displacement of a single electron by a billionth of a centimetre at one moment might make the difference between a man being killed by an avalanche a year later, or escaping. It is an essential property of the mechanical systems which we have called 'discrete state machines' that this phenomenon does not occur. Even when we consider the actual physical machines instead of the idealised machines, reasonably accurate knowledge of the state at one moment yields reasonably accurate knowledge any number of steps later.

{p.441} As we have mentioned, digital computers fall within the class of discrete state machines. But the number of states of which such a machine is capable is usually enormously large. For instance, the number for the machine now working at Manchester it about 2165,000, i.e. about 1050,000. Compare this with our example of the clicking wheel described above, which had three states. It is not difficult to see why the number of states should be so immense. The computer includes a store corresponding to the paper used by a human computer. It must be possible to write into the store any one of the combinations of symbols which might have been written on the paper. For simplicity suppose that only digits from 0 to 9 are used as symbols. Variations in handwriting are ignored. Suppose the computer is allowed 100 sheets of paper each containing 50 lines each with room for 30 digits. Then the number of states is 10100x50x30, i.e. 10150,000. This is about the number of states of three Manchester machines put together. The logarithm to the base two of the number of states is usually called the 'storage capacity' of the machine. Thus the Manchester machine has a storage capacity of about 165,000 and the wheel machine of our example about 1·6. If two machines are put together their capacities must be added to obtain the capacity of the resultant machine. This leads to the possibility of statements such as 'The Manchester machine contains 64 magnetic tracks each with a capacity of 2560, eight electronic tubes with a capacity of 1280. Miscellaneous storage amounts to about 300 making a total of 174,380.'

Given the table corresponding to a discrete state machine it is possible to predict what it will do. There is no reason why this calculation should not be carried out by means of a digital computer. Provided it could be carried out sufficiently quickly the digital computer could mimic the behaviour of any discrete state machine. The imitation game could then be played with the machine in question (as B) and the mimicking digital computer (as A) and the interrogator would be unable to distinguish them. Of course the digital computer must have an adequate storage capacity as well as working sufficiently fast. Moreover, it must be programmed afresh for each new machine which it is desired to mimic.

This special property of digital computers, that they can mimic any discrete state machine, is described by saying that they are universal machines. The existence of machines with this property has the important consequence that, considerations of speed apart, it is unnecessary to design various new machines to do various computing processes. They can all be {p.442} done with one digital computer, suitably programmed for each case. It will be seen that as a consequence of this all digital computers are in a sense equivalent.

We may now consider again the point raised at the end of §3. It was suggested tentatively that the question, 'Can machines think?' should be replaced by 'Are there imaginable digital computers which would do well in the imitation game?' If we wish we can make this superficially more general and ask 'Are there discrete state machines which would do well?' But in view of the universality property we see that either of these questions is equivalent to this, 'Let us fix our attention on one particular digital computer C. Is it true that by modifying this computer to have an adequate storage, suitably increasing its speed of action, and providing it with an appropriate programme, C can be made to play satisfactorily the part of A in the imitation game, the part of B being taken by a man?'

6 Contrary Views on the Main Question

We may now consider the ground to have been cleared and we are ready to proceed to the debate on our question, 'Can machines think?' and the variant of it quoted at the end of the last section. We cannot altogether abandon the original form of the problem, for opinions will differ as to the appropriateness of the substitution and we must at least listen to what has to be said in this connection.

It will simplify matters for the reader if I explain first my own beliefs in the matter. Consider first the more accurate form of the question. I believe that in about fifty years time it will be possible to programme computers with a storage capacity of about 109 to make them play the imitation game so well that an average interrogator will not have more than 70 per cent chance of making the right identification after five minutes of questioning. The original question, 'Can machines think?' I believe to be too meaningless to deserve discussion. Nevertheless I believe that at the end of the century the use of words and general educated opinion will have altered so much that one will be able to speak of machines thinking without expecting to be contradicted. I believe further that no useful purpose is served by concealing these beliefs. The popular view that scientists proceed inexorably from well-established fact to well-established fact, never being influenced by any unproved conjecture, is quite mistaken. Provided it is made clear which are proved facts and which are conjectures, no harm can result. Conjectures are of great importance since they suggest useful lines of research.

{p.443} I now proceed to consider opinions opposed to my own.

(1) The Theological Objection Thinking is a function of man's immortal soul. God has given an immortal soul to every man and woman, but not to any other animal or to machines. Hence no animal or machine can think.

I am unable to accept any part of this, but will attempt to reply in theological terms. I should find the argument more convincing if animals were classed with men, for there is a greater difference, to my mind, between the typical animate and the inanimate than there is between man and the other animals. The arbitrary character of the orthodox view becomes clearer if we consider how it might appear to a member of some other religious community. How do Christians regard the Moslem view that women have no souls? But let us leave this point aside and return to the main argument. It appears to me that the argument quoted above implies a serious restriction of the omnipotence of the Almighty. It is admitted that there are certain things that He cannot do such as making one equal to two(1), but should we not believe that He has freedom to confer a soul on an elephant if He sees fit? We might expect that He would only exercise this power in conjunction with a mutation which provided the elephant with an appropriately improved brain to minister to the needs of this soul. An argument of exactly similar form may be made for the case of machines. It may seem different because it is more difficult to "swallow". But this really only means that we think it would be less likely that He would consider the circumstances suitable for conferring a soul. The circumstances in question are discussed in the rest of this paper. In attempting to construct such machines we should not be irreverently usurping His power of creating souls, any more than we are in the procreation of children: rather we are, in either case, instruments of His will providing mansions for the souls that He creates.

However, this is mere speculation. I am not very impressed with theological arguments whatever they may be used to support. Such arguments have often been found unsatisfactory in the past. In the time of Galileo it was argued that the texts, "And the sun stood still . . . and hasted not to go down about a whole day" (Joshua x. 13) and "He laid the foundations of the earth, {p.444} that it should not move at any time" (Psalm cv. 5) were an adequate refutation of the Copernican theory. With our present knowledge such an argument appears futile. When that knowledge was not available it made a quite different impression.

(2) The 'Heads in the Sand' Objection "The consequences of machines thinking would be too dreadful. Let us hope and believe that they cannot do so."

This argument is seldom expressed quite so openly as in the form above. But it affects most of us who think about it at all. We like to believe that Man is in some subtle way superior to the rest of creation. It is best if be can be shown to be necessarily superior, for then there is no danger of him losing his commanding position. The popularity of the theological argument is clearly connected with this feeling. It is likely to be quite strong in intellectual people, since they value the power of thinking more highly than others, and are more inclined to base their belief in the superiority of Man on this power.

I do not think that this argument is sufficiently substantial to require refutation. Consolation would be more appropriate: perhaps this should be sought in the transmigration of souls.

(3) The Mathematical Objection There are a number of results of mathematical logic which can be used to show that there are limitations to the powers of discrete-state machines. The best known of these results is known as Gödel's theorem(2),and shows that in any sufficiently powerful logical system statements can be formulated which can neither be proved nor disproved within the system, unless possibly the system itself is inconsistent. There are other, in some respects similar, results due to Church, Kleene, Rosser, and Turing. The latter result is the most convenient to consider, since it refers directly to machines, whereas the others can only be used in a comparatively indirect argument: for instance if Gödel's theorem is to be used we need in addition to have some means of describing logical systems in terms of machines, and machines in terms of logical systems. The result in question refers to a type of machine which is essentially a digital computer with an infinite capacity. It states that there are certain things that such a machine cannot do. If it is rigged up to give answers to questions as in the imitation game, there will be some questions to which it will either give a wrong answer, or fail to give an answer at all however much time is allowed for a reply. There may, of course, be many such questions, and questions which cannot be answered by one machine may be satisfactorily {p.445} answered by another. We are of course supposing for the present that the questions are of the kind to which an answer 'Yes' or 'No' is appropriate, rather than questions such as 'What do you think of Picasso?' The questions that we know the machines must fail on are of this type, "Consider the machine specified as follows. . . . Will this machine ever answer 'Yes' to any question?" The dots are to be replaced by a description of some machine in a standard form, which could be something like that used in § 5. When the machine described bears a certain comparatively simple relation to the machine which is under interrogation, it can be shown that the answer is either wrong or not forthcoming. This is the mathematical result: it is argued that it proves a disability of machines to which the human intellect is not subject.

The short answer to this argument is that although it is established that there are limitations to the powers of any particular machine, it has only been stated, without any sort of proof, that no such limitations apply to the human intellect. But I do not think this view can be dismissed quite so lightly. Whenever one of these machines is asked the appropriate critical question, and gives a definite answer, we know that this answer must be wrong, and this gives us a certain feeling of superiority. Is this feeling illusory? It is no doubt quite genuine, but I do not think too much importance should be attached to it. We too often give wrong answers to questions ourselves to be justified in being very pleased at such evidence of fallibility on the part of the machines. Further, our superiority can only be felt on such an occasion in relation to the one machine over which we have scored our petty triumph. There w6uld be no question of triumphing simultaneously over all machines. In short, then, there might be men cleverer than any given machine, but then again there might be other machines cleverer again, and so on.

Those who hold to the mathematical argument would, I think, mostly be willing to accept the imitation game as a basis for discussion. Those who believe in the two previous objections would probably not be interested in any criteria.

(4) The Argument from Consciousness This argument is very well expressed in Professor Jefferson's Lister Oration for 1949, from which I quote.

"Not until a machine can write a Bonnet or compose a concerto because of thoughts and emotions felt, and not by the chance fall of symbols, could we agree that machine equals brain-that is, not only write it but know that it had written it. No mechanism could feel (and not merely {p.446} artificially signal, an easy contrivance) pleasure at its successes, grief when its valves fuse, be warmed by flattery, be made miserable by its mistakes, be charmed by sex, be angry or depressed when it cannot get what it wants."

This argument appears to be a denial of the validity of our test. According to the most extreme form of this view the only way by which one could be sure that a machine thinks is to be the machine and to feel oneself thinking. One could then describe these feelings to the world, but of course no one would be justified in taking any notice. Likewise according to this view the only way to know that a man thinks is to be that particular man. It is in fact the solipsist point of view. It may be the most logical view to hold but it makes communication of ideas difficult. A is liable to believe 'A thinks but B does not' whilst B believes 'B thinks but A does not'. Instead of arguing continually over this point it is usual to have the polite convention that everyone thinks.

I am sure that Professor Jefferson does not wish to adopt the extreme and solipsist point of view. Probably he would be quite willing to accept the imitation game as a test. The game (with the player B omitted) is frequently used in practice under the name of viva voce to discover whether some one really understands something or has 'learnt it parrot fashion'. Let us listen in to a part of such a viva voce:

Interrogator: In the first line of your sonnet which reads 'Shall I compare
thee to a summer's day', would not 'a spring day' do as
well or better?

Witness: It wouldn't scan.

Interrogator: How about 'a winter's day' That would scan all right.

Witness: Yes, but nobody wants to be compared to a winter's day.

Interrogator: Would you say Mr. Pickwick reminded you of Christmas?

Witness: In a way.

Interrogator: Yet Christmas is a winter's day, and I do not think Mr.
Pickwick would mind the comparison.

Witness: I don't think you're serious. By a winter's day one means a
typical winter's day, rather than a special one like Christmas.

And so on. What would Professor Jefferson say if the sonnet-writing machine was able to answer like this in the viva voce? I do not know whether he would regard the machine as 'merely {p.447} artificially signalling' these answers, but if the answers were as satisfactory and sustained as in the above passage I do not think he would describe it as 'an easy contrivance'. This phrase is, I think, intended to cover such devices as the inclusion in the machine of a record of someone reading a sonnet, with appropriate switching to turn it on from time to time.

In short then, I think that most of those who support the argument from consciousness could be persuaded to abandon it rather than be forced into the solipsist position. They will then probably be willing to accept our test.

I do not wish to give the impression that I think there is no mystery about consciousness. There is, for instance, something of a paradox connected with any attempt to localise it. But I do not think these mysteries necessarily need to be solved before we can answer the question with which we are concerned in this paper.

(5) Arguments from Various Disabilities These arguments take the form, "I grant you that you can make machines do all the things you have mentioned but you will never be able to make one to do X". Numerous features X are suggested in this connection. I offer a selection:

Be kind, resourceful, beautiful, friendly (p.448), have initiative, have a sense of humour, tell right from wrong, make mistakes (p.448), fall in love, enjoy strawberries and cream (p.448), make some one fall in love with it, learn from experience (pp.456 f.), use words properly, be the subject of its own thought (p.449), have as much diversity of behaviour as a man, do something really new (p.450). (Some of these disabilities are given special consideration as indicated by the page numbers.)

No support is usually offered for these statements. I believe they are mostly founded on the principle of scientific induction. A man has seen thousands of machines in his lifetime. From what he sees of them he draws a number of general conclusions. They are ugly, each is designed for a very limited purpose, when required for a minutely different purpose they are useless, the variety of behaviour of any one of them is very small, etc., etc. Naturally he concludes that these are necessary properties of machines in general. Many of these limitations are associated with the very small storage capacity of most machines. (I am assuming that the idea of storage capacity is extended in some way to cover machines other than discrete-state machines. {p.448} The exact definition does not matter as no mathematical accuracy is claimed in the present discussion.) A few years ago, when very little had been heard of digital computers, it was possible to elicit much incredulity concerning them, if one mentioned their properties without describing their construction. That was presumably due to a similar application of the principle of scientific induction. These applications of the principle are of course largely unconscious. When a burnt child fears the fire and shows that he fears it by avoiding it, I should say that he was applying scientific induction. (I could of course also describe his behaviour in many other ways.) The works and customs of mankind do not seem to be very suitable material to which to apply scientific induction. A very large part of space-time must be investigated, if reliable results are to be obtained. Otherwise we may (as most English children do) decide that everybody speaks English, and that it is silly to learn French.

There are, however, special remarks to be made about many of the disabilities that have been mentioned. The inability to enjoy strawberries and cream may have struck the reader as frivolous. Possibly a machine might be made to enjoy this delicious dish, but any attempt to make one do so would be idiotic. What is important about this disability is that it contributes to some of the other disabilities, e.g. to the difficulty of the same kind of friendliness occurring between man and machine as between white man and white man, or between black man and black man.

The claim that "machines cannot make mistakes" seems a curious one. One is tempted to retort, "Are they any the worse for that?" But let us adopt a more sympathetic attitude, and try to see what is really meant. I think this criticism can be explained in terms of the imitation game. It is claimed that the interrogator could distinguish the machine from the man simply by setting them a number of problems in arithmetic. The machine would be unmasked because of its deadly accuracy. The reply to this is simple. The machine (programmed for playing the game) would not attempt to give the right answers to the arithmetic problems. It would deliberately introduce mistakes in a manner calculated to confuse the interrogator. A mechanical fault would probably show itself through an unsuitable decision as to what sort of a mistake to make in the arithmetic. Even this interpretation of the criticism is not sufficiently sympathetic. But we cannot afford the space to go into it much further. It seems to me that this criticism depends {p.449} on a confusion between two kinds of mistake. We may call them 'errors of functioning' and 'errors of conclusion'. Errors of functioning are due to some mechanical or electrical fault which causes the machine to behave otherwise than it was designed to do. In philosophical discussions one likes to ignore the possibility of such errors; one is therefore discussing 'abstract machines'. These abstract machines are mathematical fictions rather than physical objects. By definition they are incapable of errors of functioning. In this sense we can truly say that 'machines can never make mistakes'. Errors of conclusion can only arise when some meaning is attached to the output signals from the machine. The machine might, for instance, type out mathematical equations, or sentences in English. When a false proposition is typed we say that the machine has committed an error of conclusion. There is clearly no reason at all for saying that a machine cannot make this kind of mistake. It might do nothing but type out repeatedly '0=1'. To take a less perverse example, it might have some method for drawing conclusions by scientific induction. We must expect such a method to lead occasionally to erroneous results.

The claim that a machine cannot be the subject of its own thought can of course only be answered if it can be shown that the machine has some thought with some subject matter. Nevertheless, 'the subject matter of a machine's operations' does seem to mean something, at least to the people who deal with it. If, for instance, the machine was trying to find a solution of the equation x2 - 40x - 11=0 one would be tempted to describe this equation as part of the machine's subject matter at that moment. In this sort of sense a machine undoubtedly can be its own subject matter. It may be used to help in making up its own programmes, or to predict the effect of alterations in its own structure. By observing the results of its own behaviour it can modify its own programmes so as to achieve some purpose more effectively. These are possibilities of the near future, rather than Utopian dreams.

The criticism that a machine cannot have much diversity of behaviour is just a way of saying that it cannot have much storage capacity. Until fairly recently a storage capacity of even a thousand digits was very rare.

The criticisms that we are considering here are often disguised forms of the argument from consciousness. Usually if one maintains that a machine can do one of these things, and describes the kind of method that the machine could use, one will not make {p.450} much of an impression. It is thought that the method (whatever it may be, for it must be mechanical) is really rather base. Compare the parenthesis in Jefferson's statement quoted on p.21.

(6) Lady Lovelace's Objection Our most detailed information of Babbage's Analytical Engine comes from a memoir by Lady Lovelace. In it she states, "The Analytical Engine has no pretensions to originate anything. It can do whatever we know how to order it to perform" (her italics). This statement is quoted by Hartree (p.70) who adds: "This does not imply that it may not be possible to construct electronic equipment which will 'think for itself', or in which, in biological terms, one could set up a conditioned reflex, which would serve as a basis for 'learning'. Whether this is possible in principle or not is a stimulating and exciting question, suggested by some of these recent developments. But it did not seem that the machines constructed or projected at the time had this property."

I am in thorough agreement with Hartree over this. It will be noticed that he does not assert that the machines in question had not got the property, but rather that the evidence available to Lady Lovelace did not encourage her to believe that they had it. It is quite possible that the machines in question had in a sense got this property. For suppose that some discrete-state machine has the property. The Analytical Engine was a universal digital computer, so that, if its storage capacity and speed were adequate, it could by suitable programming be made to mimic the machine in question. Probably this argument did not occur to the Countess or to Babbage. In any case there was no obligation on them to claim all that could be claimed.

This whole question will be considered again under the heading of learning machines.

A variant of Lady Lovelace's objection states that a machine can 'never do anything really new'. This may be parried for a moment with the saw, 'There is nothing new under the sun'. Who can be certain that 'original work' that he has done was not simply the growth of the seed planted in him by teaching, or the effect of following well-known general principles. A better variant of the objection says that a machine can never 'take us by surprise'. This statement is a more direct challenge and can be met directly. Machines take me by surprise with great frequency. This is largely because I do not do sufficient calculation to decide what to expect them to do, or rather because, although I do a calculation, I do it in a hurried, slipshod fashion, taking risks. Perhaps I say to myself, 'I suppose the voltage here ought to be the same as there: anyway let's assume it is'. {p.451} Naturally I am often wrong, and the result is a surprise for me for by the time the experiment is done these assumptions have been forgotten. These admissions lay me open to lectures on the subject of my vicious ways, but do not throw any doubt on my credibility when I testify to the surprises I experience.

I do not expect this reply to silence my critic. He will probably say that such surprises are due to some creative mental act on my part, and reflect no credit on the machine. This leads us back to the argument from consciousness, and far from the idea of surprise. It is a line of argument we must consider closed, but it is perhaps worth remarking that the appreciation of something as surprising requires as much of a 'creative mental act' whether the surprising event originates from a man, a book, a machine or anything else.

The view that machines cannot give rise to surprises is due, I believe, to a fallacy to which philosophers and mathematicians are particularly subject. This is the assumption that as soon as a fact is presented to a mind all consequences of that fact spring into the mind simultaneously with it. It is a very useful assumption under many circumstances, but one too easily forgets that it is false. A natural consequence of doing so is that one then assumes that there is no virtue in the mere working out of consequences from data and general principles.

(7) Argument from Continuity in the Nervous System The nervous system is certainly not a discrete-state machine. A small error in the information about the size of a nervous impulse impinging on a neuron, may make a large difference to the size of the outgoing impulse. It may be argued that, this being so, one cannot expect to be able to mimic the behaviour of the nervous system with a discrete-state system.

It is true that a discrete-state machine must be different from a continuous machine. But if we adhere to the conditions of the imitation game, the interrogator will not be able to take any advantage of this difference. The situation can be made clearer if we consider some other simpler continuous machine. A differential analyser will do very well. (A differential analyser is a certain kind of machine not of the discrete-state type used for some kinds of calculation.) Some of these provide their answers in a typed form, and so are suitable for taking part in the game. It would not be possible for a digital computer to predict exactly hat answers the differential analyser would give to a problem, but it would be quite capable of giving the right sort of answer. For instance, if asked to give the value of pi (actually about 3·1416) it would be reasonable {p.452} to choose at random between the values 3·12, 3·13, 3·14, 3·15, 3·16 with the probabilities of 0·05, 0·15, 0·55, 0·19, 0·06 (say). Under these circumstances it would be very difficult for the interrogator to distinguish the differential analyser from the digital computer.

(8) The Argument from Informality of Behaviour It is not possible to produce a set of rules purporting to describe what a man should do in every conceivable set of circumstances. One might for instance have a rule that one is to stop when one sees a red traffic light, and to go if one sees a green one, but what if by some fault both appear together? One may perhaps decide that it is safest to stop. But some further difficulty may well arise from this decision later. To attempt to provide rules of conduct to cover every eventuality, even those arising from traffic lights, appears to be impossible. With all this I agree.

From this it is argued that we cannot be machines. I shall try to reproduce the argument, but I fear I shall hardly do it justice. It seems to run something like this. 'If each man had a definite set of rules of conduct by which he regulated his life he would be no better than a machine. But there are no such rules, so men cannot be machines.' The undistributed middle is glaring. I do not think the argument is ever put quite like this, but I believe this is the argument used nevertheless. There may however be a certain confusion between 'rules of conduct' and 'laws of behaviour' to cloud the issue. By 'rules of conduct' I mean precepts such as 'Stop if you see red lights', on which one can act, and of which one can be conscious. By 'laws of behaviour' I mean laws of nature as applied to a man's body such as 'if you pinch him he will squeak'. If we substitute 'laws of behaviour which regulate his life' for 'laws of conduct by which he regulates his life' in the argument quoted the undistributed middle is no longer insuperable. For we believe that it is not only true that being regulated by laws of behaviour implies being some sort of machine (though not necessarily a discrete-state machine), but that conversely being such a machine implies being regulated by such laws. However, we cannot so easily convince ourselves of the absence of complete laws of behaviour as of complete rules of conduct. The only way we know of for finding such laws is scientific observation, and we certainly know of no circumstances under which we could say, "We have searched enough. There are no such laws."

We can demonstrate more forcibly that any such statement would be unjustified. For suppose we could be sure of finding {p.453} such laws if they existed. Then given a discrete-state machine it should certainly be possible to discover by observation sufficient about it to predict its future behaviour, and this within a reasonable time, say a thousand years. But this does not seem to be the case. I have set up on the Manchester computer a small programme using only 1000 units of storage, whereby the machine supplied with one sixteen figure number replies with another within two seconds. I would defy anyone to learn from these replies sufficient about the programme to be able to predict any replies to untried values.

(9) The Argument from Extra-Sensory Perception I assume that the reader is familiar with the idea of extra-sensory perception, and the meaning of the four items of it, viz. telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition and psycho-kinesis. These disturbing phenomena seem to deny all our usual scientific ideas. How we should like to discredit them! Unfortunately the statistical evidence, at least for telepathy, is overwhelming. It is very difficult to rearrange one's ideas so as to fit these new facts in. Once one has accepted them it does not seem a very big step to believe in ghosts and bogies. The idea that our bodies move simply according to the known laws of physics, together with some others not yet discovered but somewhat similar, would be one of the first to go.

This argument is to my mind quite a strong one. One can say in reply that many scientific theories seem to remain workable in practice, in spite of clashing with E.S.P.; that in fact one can get along very nicely if one forgets about it. This is rather cold comfort, and one fears that thinking is just the kind of phenomenon where E.S.P. may be especially relevant.

A more specific argument based on E.S.P. might run as follows:

"Let us play the imitation game, using as witnesses a man who is good as a telepathic receiver, and a digital computer. The interrogator can ask such questions as 'What suit does the card in my right hand belong to?' The man by telepathy or clairvoyance gives the right answer 130 times out of 400 cards. The machine can only guess at random, and perhaps gets 104 right, so the interrogator makes the right identification." There is an interesting possibility which opens here. Suppose the digital computer contains a random number generator. Then it will be natural to use this to decide what answer to give. But then the random number generator will be subject to the psycho-kinetic powers of the interrogator. Perhaps this psycho-kinesis might cause the machine to guess right more often than would be expected on a probability calculation, so that the interrogator {p.454} might still be unable to make the right identification. On the other hand, he might be able to guess right without any questioning, by clairvoyance. With E.S.P. anything may happen.

If telepathy is admitted it will be necessary to tighten our test up. The situation could be regarded as analogous to that which would occur if the interrogator were talking to himself and one of the competitors was listening with his ear to the wall. To put the competitors into a 'telepathy-proof room' would satisfy all requirements.

7 Learning Machines

The reader will have anticipated that I have no very convincing arguments of a positive nature to support my views. If I had I should not have taken such pains to point out the fallacies in contrary views. Such evidence as I have I shall now give.

Let us return for a moment to Lady Lovelace's objection, which stated that the machine can only do what we tell it to do. One could say that a man can 'inject' an idea into the machine, and that it will respond to a certain extent and then drop into quiescence, like a piano string struck by a hammer. Another simile would be an atomic pile of less than critical size: an injected idea is to correspond to a neutron entering the pile from without. Each such neutron will cause a certain disturbance which eventually dies away. If, however, the size of the pile is sufficiently increased, the disturbance caused by such an incoming neutron will very likely go on and on increasing until the whole pile is destroyed. Is there a corresponding phenomenon for minds, and is there one for machines? There does seem to be one for the human mind. The majority of them seem to be 'sub-critical', i.e. to correspond in this analogy to piles of sub-critical size. An idea presented to such a mind will on average give rise to less than one idea in reply. A smallish proportion are super-critical. An idea presented to such a mind may give rise to a whole 'theory' consisting of secondary, tertiary and more remote ideas. Animals minds seem to be very definitely sub-critical. Adhering to this analogy we ask, 'Can a machine be made to be super-critical?'

The 'skin of an onion' analogy is also helpful. In considering the functions of the mind or the brain we find certain operations which we can explain in purely mechanical terms. This we say does not correspond to the real mind: it is a sort of skin which we must strip off if we are to find the real mind. But then in what remains we find a further skin to be stripped off, and so on. {p.455} Proceeding in this way do we ever come to the 'real' mind, or do we eventually come to the skin which has nothing in it? In the latter case the whole mind is mechanical. (It would not be a discrete-state machine however. We have discussed this.)

These last two paragraphs do not claim to be convincing arguments. They should rather be described as 'recitations tending to produce belief'.

The only really satisfactory support that can be given for the view expressed at the beginning of § 6, will be that provided by waiting for the end of the century and then doing the experiment described. But what can we say in the meantime? What steps should be taken now if the experiment is to be successful?

As I have explained, the problem is mainly one of programming. Advances in engineering will have to be made too, but it seems unlikely that these will not be adequate for the requirements. Estimates of the storage capacity of the brain vary from 1010 to 1015 binary digits. I incline to the lower values and believe that only a very small fraction is used for the higher types of thinking. Most of it is probably used for the retention of visual impressions. I should be surprised if more than l09 was required for satisfactory playing of the imitation game, at any rate against a blind man. (Note--The capacity of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th edition, is 2 x l09.) A storage capacity of l07would be a very practicable possibility even by present techniques. It is probably not necessary to increase the speed of operations of the machines at all. Parts of modern machines which can be regarded as analogues of nerve cells work about a thousand times faster than the latter. This should provide a 'margin of safety' which could cover losses of speed arising in many ways. Our problem then is to find out how to programme these machines to play the game. At my present rate of working I produce about a thousand digits of programme a day, so that about sixty workers, working steadily through the fifty years might accomplish the job, if nothing went into the waste-paper basket. Some more expeditious method seems desirable.

In the process of trying to imitate an adult human mind we are bound to think a good deal about the process which has brought it to the state that it is in. We may notice three components,

(a) The initial state of the mind, say at birth,

(b) The education to which it has been subjected,

(c) Other, not to be described as education, to which it has been subjected.

{p.456} Instead of trying to produce a programme to simulate the adult mind, why not rather try to produce one which simulates the child's? If this were then subjected to an appropriate course of education one would obtain the adult brain. Presumably the child-brain is something like a note-book as one buys it from the stationers. Rather little mechanism, and lots of blank sheets. (Mechanism and writing are from our point of view almost synonymous.) Our hope is that there is so little mechanism in the child-brain that something like it can be easily programmed. The amount of work in the education we can assume, as a first approximation, to be much the same as for the human child.

We have thus divided our problem into two parts. The child-programme and the education process. These two remain very closely connected. We cannot expect to find a good child-machine at the first attempt. One must experiment with teaching one such machine and see how well it learns. One can then try another and see if it is better or worse. There is an obvious connection between this process and evolution, by the identifications

Structure of the child machine = Hereditary material

Changes of the child machine = Mutations

Natural selection = Judgment of the experimenter

One may hope, however, that this process will be more expeditious than evolution. The survival of the fittest is a slow method for measuring advantages. The experimenter, by the exercise of intelligence, should be able to speed it up. Equally important is the fact that he is not restricted to random mutations. If he can trace a cause for some weakness he can probably think of the kind of mutation which will improve it.

It will not be possible to apply exactly the same teaching process to the machine as to a normal child. It will not, for instance, be provided with legs, so that it could not be asked to go out and fill the coal scuttle. Possibly it might not have eyes. But however well these deficiencies might be overcome by clever engineering, one could not send the creature to school with out the other children making excessive fun of it. It must be given some tuition. We need not be too concerned about the legs, eyes, etc. The example of Miss Helen Keller shows that education can take place provided that communication in both directions between teacher and pupil can take place by some means or other.

{p.457}We normally associate punishments and rewards with the teaching process. Some simple child-machines can be constructed or programmed on this sort of principle. The machine has to be so constructed that events which shortly preceded the occurrence of a punishment-signal are unlikely to be repeated, whereas a reward-signal increased the probability of repetition of the events which led up to it. These definitions do not presuppose any feelings on the part of the machine. I have done some experiments with one such child-machine, and succeeded in teaching it a few things, but the teaching method was too unorthodox for the experiment to be considered really successful.

The use of punishments and rewards can at best be a part of the teaching process. Roughly speaking, if the teacher has no other means of communicating to the pupil, the amount of information which can reach him does not exceed the total number of rewards and punishments applied. By the time a child has learnt to repeat 'Casabianca' he would probably feel very sore indeed, if the text could only be discovered by a 'Twenty Questions' technique, every 'NO' taking the form of a blow. It is necessary therefore to have some other 'unemotional' channels of communication. If these are available it is possible to teach a machine by punishments and rewards to obey orders given in some language, e.g. a symbolic language. These orders are to be transmitted through the 'unemotional' channels. The use of this language will diminish greatly the number of punishments and rewards required.

Opinions may vary as to the complexity which is suitable in the child machine. One might try to make it as simple as possible consistently with the general principles. Alternatively one might have a complete system of logical inference 'built in '(3) In the latter case the store would be largely occupied with definitions and propositions. The propositions would have various kinds of status, e.g. well-established facts, conjectures, mathematically proved theorems, statements given by an authority, expressions having the logical form of proposition but not belief-value. Certain propositions may be described as 'imperatives'. The machine should be so constructed that as soon as an imperative is classed as 'well-established ' the appropriate action automatically takes place. To illustrate this, suppose the teacher says to the machine, 'Do your homework now'. This may cause "Teacher says 'Do your homework now' " to be included amongst the well-established facts. Another such fact might be, {p.458} "Everything that teacher says is true". Combining these may eventually lead to the imperative, 'Do your homework now', being included amongst the well-established facts, and this, by the construction of the machine, will mean that the homework actually gets started, but the effect is very satisfactory. The processes of inference used by the machine need not be such as would satisfy the most exacting logicians. There might for instance be no hierarchy of types. But this need not mean that type fallacies will occur any more than we are bound to fall over unfenced cliffs. Suitable imperatives (expressed within the systems, not forming part of the rules of the system) such as 'Do not use a class unless it is a subclass of one which has been mentioned by teacher' can have a similar effect to 'Do not go too near the edge'.

The imperatives that can be obeyed by a machine that has no limbs are bound to be of a rather intellectual character, as in the example (doing homework) given above. Important amongst such imperatives will be ones which regulate the order in which the rules of the logical system concerned are to be applied For at each stage when one is using a logical system, there is a very large number of alternative steps, any of which one is permitted to apply, so far as obedience to the rules of the logical system is concerned. These choices make the difference between a brilliant and a footling reasoner, not the difference between a sound and a fallacious one. Propositions leading to imperatives of this kind might be "When Socrates is mentioned, use the syllogism in Barbara" or "If one method has been proved to be quicker than another, do not use the slower method". Some of these may be 'given by authority', but others may be produced by the machine itself, e.g. by scientific induction.

The idea of a learning machine may appear paradoxical to some readers. How can the rules of operation of the machine change? They should describe completely how the machine will react whatever its history might be, whatever changes it might undergo. The rules are thus quite time-invariant. This is quite true. The explanation of the paradox is that the rules which get changed in the learning process are of a rather less pretentious kind, claiming only an ephemeral validity. The reader may draw a parallel with the Constitution of the United States.

An important feature of a learning machine is that its teacher will often be very largely ignorant of quite what is going on inside, although he may still be able to some extent to predict his pupil's behaviour. This should apply most strongly to the {p.459} later education of a machine arising from a child-machine of well-tried design (or programme). This is in clear contrast with normal procedure when using a machine to do computations: one's object is then to have a clear mental picture of the state of the machine at each moment in the computation. This object can only be achieved with a struggle. The view that 'the machine can only do what we know how to order it to do',(4) appears Strange in face of this. Most of the programmes which we can put into the machine will result in its doing something that we cannot make sense of at all, or which we regard as completely random behaviour. Intelligent behaviour presumably consists in a departure from the completely disciplined behaviour involved in computation, but a rather slight one, which does not give rise to random behaviour, or to pointless repetitive loops. Another important result of preparing our machine for its part in the imitation game by a process of teaching and learning is that 'human fallibility' is likely to be omitted in a rather natural way, i.e. without special 'coaching'. (The reader should reconcile this with the point of view on pp. 24, 25.) Processes that are learnt do not produce a hundred per cent. certainty of result; if they did they could not be unlearnt.

It is probably wise to include a random element in a learning machine (see p.438). A random element is rather useful when we are searching for a solution of some problem. Suppose for instance we wanted to find a number between 50 and 200 which was equal to the square of the sum of its digits, we might start at 51 then try 52 and go on until we got a number that worked. Alternatively we might choose numbers at random until we got a good one. This method has the advantage that it is unnecessary to keep track of the values that have been tried, but the disadvantage that one may try the same one twice, but this is not very important if there are several solutions. The systematic method has the disadvantage that there may be an enormous block without any solutions in the region which has to be investigated first. Now the learning process may be regarded as a search for a form of behaviour which will satisfy the teacher (or some other criterion). Since there is probably a very large number of satisfactory solutions the random method seems to be better than the systematic. It should be noticed that it is used in the analogous process of evolution. But there the systematic method is not possible. How could one keep track {p.460} of the different genetical combinations that had been tried, so as to avoid trying them again?

We may hope that machines will eventually compete with men in all purely intellectual fields. But which are the best ones to start with? Even this is a difficult decision. Many people think that a very abstract activity, like the playing of chess would be best. It can also be maintained that it is best to provide the machine with the best sense organs that money can buy, and then teach it to understand and speak English. This process could follow the normal teaching of a child. Things would be pointed out and named, etc. Again I do not know what the right answer is, but I think both approaches should be tried.

We can only see a short distance ahead, but we can see plenty there that needs to be done.

Related further reading
Decision processes Computing machinery and intelligence

On computable numbers, with an application to the Entscheidungsproblem the Turing Test and intelligence

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Samuel Butler, Erewhon, London, 1865. Chapters 28, 24, 25, The Book of the Machines.

Alonzo Church, An Unsolvable Problem of Elementary Number Theory
American J. of Math., 58 (1936), 345-363.

K. Gödel, Über formal unentscheidbare Sätze der Principia Mathematica und verwandter Systeme, I, Monatshefte für Math. und Phys., (1931), 173-189.

D. R. Hartree, Calculating Instruments and Machines, New York, 1949.

S. C. Kleene, General Recursive Functions of Natural Numbers
American J. of Math., 57 (1935), 153-173 and 219-244.

G. Jefferson, The Mind of Mechanical Man, Lister Oration for 1949
British Medical Journal, vol. i (1949), 1105-1121.

Countess of Lovelace, Translator's notes to an article on Babbage's Analytical Engine Scientific Memoir(ed. by R. Taylor), vol. 3 (1842), 691-731.

Bertrand Russell, History of Western Philosophy, London 1940.

A M. Turing, On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem, Proc. London Math. Soc. (2), 42 (1937), 230-265.

Victoria University of Manchester.

FOOT NOTES

1. Possibly this view is heretical. St. Thomas Aquinas (Summa Theologica, quoted by Bertrand Russell, 1, 480) states that God cannot make a man to have no soul. But this may not be a real restriction on His powers, but only a result of the fact that men's souls are immortal, and therefore indestructible.

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2. Author's names in italics refer to the Bibliography.

3. Or rather 'programmed in' for our child-machine will be programmed in a digital computer. But the logical system will not have to be learnt.

4. Compare Lady Lovelace's statement (p.450), which does not contain the word 'only'.

The Turing test and intelligence gives a detailed logical analysis of the relationship between intelligence and Turing’s proposed test of intelligence as outlined in Computing machinery and intelligence (this document).

facade

2005-07-06T08:43:00.000-07:00

MARINA DEL REY, Calif., June 3 - Standing outside the apartment on Thursday, Walter could hear the barbs and retorts of a failed marriage's final throes.

Interactivestory.net

The game "Facade" is controlled by artificial intelligence techniques.

Walter's friends, Grace and Trip, had invited him over. Now, though only every third word seeped through the door, Walter could hardly mistake the bickering.

At Walter's knock the voices stopped. The couple adopted brittle masks of happiness. But as their banter moved from Trip's new bartender set to recent Italian vacations to Grace's latest apartment makeover, the couple gradually returned to the needling exchanges of domestic strife.

As Grace and Trip retreated to opposite sides of the living room, sniping about old grievances, Walter appealed to the couple's loyalties, trying valiantly to reconcile his friends.

This is the future of video games. In their modern riff on "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" Walter was the only human. Grace and Trip were virtual characters powered by advanced artificial intelligence techniques, which allowed them to change their emotional state in fairly complicated ways in response to the conversational English being typed in by the human player.

It was one version of the future here this past week at the first Artificial Intelligence and Interactive Digital Entertainment conference. It is a future where games are driven as strongly by characters as combat, where games are as much soap opera as shooting gallery and as much free-form construction set as destruction arena. The apartment drama, a 15-minute interactive story called "Facade" that is scheduled to be released free next month (interactivestory.net), was one of the demonstrations offered to the roughly 120 game makers and academic computer experts who attended.

"As we try to create more immersive experiences, these artificial intelligence techniques are helping drive games forward and this is one of the areas that could really explode," Bing Gordon, chief creative officer at Electronic Arts, the No. 1 video game company, said after his talk Wednesday night. "We hope that the folks here start thinking about artificial intelligence as a feature, like graphics is a feature or sound is a feature."

While the adaptability and behavioral subtlety in recent classics like "Black & White," "Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri" and "The Sims" have impressed gamers with their seeming-intelligence, those titles have been but an early step.

"For a long time, games have been judged largely on their graphics," said Ian Lane Davis, a conference organizer and chief executive of Mad Doc Software, which recently created the well-received Empire Earth II, a real-time strategy game. "The graphics hardware is now getting powerful enough that basically everything looks good now. So what is starting to differentiate games is what is happening inside the characters, how the opponents behave and make plans, how comprehensively and realistically the worlds respond to what the players want to do."

"At the same time," he added, "players are demanding a lot more freedom. Often they don't want to be put on a roller coaster track that just takes them along one path, no matter how entertaining that one path may be. They want a range of choices and they want those choices to matter in creating the overall experience. You put together all of these demands, and that's why you're seeing all of this attention now on artificial intelligence in games."

Outside the game world, the term artificial intelligence is used to label technologies as disparate as air traffic control systems and automated vacuum cleaners. At the conference, much of the discussion was about specific game activities that, to a human, would seem more intuitive than rational, like using conversational language.

But one of the broadest and most powerful approaches to artificial intelligence may be one that does not focus on determining specific behaviors. ("Does the computer general know that it should use tanks and artillery together?")

Rather, it is a move to structure programs so that they absorb available information and then generate their own strategies to achieve sometimes-contradictory goals ("protect the hostages" versus "kill the enemy," for instance).

Traditionally, game programmers have created activity through explicit if-then statements: if the player attacks the castle, then send pikemen to defend it; if the player corners the market on wheat, then invest in corn. That process is known as scripting. But what should the computer do if the player takes an action that is not in a script?

"The problem now is that the worlds are so complex and the variety of potential actions so vast that trying to direct the environments and the behaviors of computer-controlled agents through traditional scripting can become unmanageable," Jeff Orkin, an artificial intelligence programmer at Monolith Productions, said between sessions.

Three years ago, Mr. Orkin worked on Monolith's campy "No One Lives Forever 2," set in the 1960's. Now he is working on "F.E.A.R.," a game scheduled for later this year.

"We used to manually lay out all of the steps that an agent would take: do this, then do that, and if this other thing happens then try this," Mr. Orkin said. "Now we tell the agent: here are your goals, here are your basic tools, you figure out how to accomplish it."

"For example, let's say you the player are running down a hall and an enemy is pursuing you," Mr. Orkin said. "You get to a door and slam it behind you. The enemy replans and tries to kick it in, but if you hold it closed with your weight he will replan again and maybe come around and dive through a window. In the past, the programmer would have had to explicitly code each of these steps. Now, you put the character in the building and it figures out a plan on its own."

As put by Chris Crawford, a legendary game designer of the 1980's who now focuses on interactive storytelling technology: "As a game designer you are an absolute god. One kind of god says, 'O.K., now this leaf will fall a little bit here, and then this wind will blow a bit over there.' The other kind of god says, 'Here are the laws of physics. Go for it.' "

That conceptual leap from designer-as-determinist to designer-as-prime mover is what has made both the "Grand Theft Auto" and "The Sims" series so popular. The challenge is that even as gamers have come to expect more freedom in their virtual environments, they have also come to expect more explicitly directed cinematic moments, like the D-Day invasion scenario in "Medal of Honor," where players can feel as if they are living a movie.

"There is a real tension between wanting to handcraft the experience to generate a specific emotional response and wanting to allow a more open-ended environment so the player feels they are in control," said Doug Church, one of the designers behind the highly regarded "Thief" and "System Shock" series. "Artificial intelligence will help us bridge the two."

But perhaps that bridge will run in unexpected directions. Until now, artificial intelligence has often involved making computers accessible to humans. With his new project, "Spore," Will Wright of "The Sims" fame means to invert that concept.

"Until now, artificial intelligence has usually meant that the human creates or perceives a model of how the computer makes decisions," Mr. Wright said. "But what if the computer is instead analyzing the player, and the program is customizing the experience based on the internal model it has created of the human?"

"Spore" is meant to tailor a species' entire evolutionary experience - from amoebalike gene pattern to intergalactic emperor - to each user's individual play style. In that sense, future generations of games may process humans just as intensively as humans are playing the software. But not to worry, Mr. Church said: "We have a long way to go before we get there."

good points

2005-06-29T12:20:00.000-07:00

You’re saying that “A person that agrees with Richard Hanley is not in his right mind because someone would have to be not right-of-mind to agree with such a claim.”

I apologize for not being clear. It was Dr. Hanley's example (as an atheist) that morality must be and indeed is objective, through that illistration. Meaning, he presented that proposition to the lecture hall and asked if anyone can think of any case that would justify the physical torture of babies for the sole purpose of sexual arousal.

It is science, not faith, that proved this notion wrong. Thank you for reinforcing my argument. In fact, it was naïve anthropocentric and geocentric biased faith that produced this notion in the first place. (Much like the anthropocentric notion that we alone have free will, and that humans are the only beings deserving of moral consideration).

Everyone thought that Newton's laws of motion were infallible, and then came Einstein. Heck, if string theory is proven then that throws Einstein out the window too. When does the madness end? Do we really know anything at all?

So basically, through faith, someone believes that the righteous will live by faith. Argumentation, anyone?

I don't know if it should be that circular. It is simply that faith is faith, regardless of how many iterations are expounded. "If you have faith as small as a mustard seed" (Matthew 17:20) is powerful enough to move mountains. I mean, I don't want to make this a matter of semantics, but how I have defined faith is how I am defining faith. And regardless of how we define faith (similar to love), it is undeniably something that is experienced universally, despite religious affiliation. Now in the gospel of Matthew, the quantity of faith is specifically deemphasized. It is not how deep (in iterations or amount) your faith runs, but just a matter of having it or not.

The responder defines faith for us, but never says why faith based on a particular book should be trusted any more than say, my earlier post (or the work of someone like Richard Hanley).

I enjoy this discussion very much. I wish I could disclose my own personal account of faith, but in the end, it is indeed personal. Maybe we can talk about it sometime :)

Consciousness? Show me where it is, and what makes it different from non-consciousness such that it can participate in ontological spectrums that are distinctly separate from non-conscious ones.

Wow, due to tha fact that I have not thought that deeply about epistemology, I give you that for my argument (on the idea of percieved will) to stand, one must be a dualist. I'll leave the legitimacy of dualism for another day's discussion.

Good points!

existential skeptic

2005-06-29T12:19:00.000-07:00

“Find me a right-of-mind person who agrees and if there exists none, then that is one aspect of objective morality.”
This is an example of the ‘democratic theory of truth.’ If we all believe it, it must be true. There is a problem in your criteria because if you did find a person who agreed, you would declare him to be outside the population of people you’d say are “right-of-mind,” thereby circularly justifying your claim. You’re saying that “A person that agrees with Richard Hanley is not in his right mind because someone would have to be not right-of-mind to agree with such a claim.”
A more fundamental problem with this assertion is that democratic theories of morality and epistemology are wholly subjective and the polar opposite of objective. Objective morality could exist (or not exist) even though no one believes in it. Objective morality might fail to exist even if we all believe in it (and most of us do, because it is evolutionarily adaptive to believe in such things).

“Remember back when the world was flat? Reality is far bigger than our meager senses can perceive accurately.”
It is science, not faith, that proved this notion wrong. Thank you for reinforcing my argument. In fact, it was naïve anthropocentric and geocentric biased faith that produced this notion in the first place. (Much like the anthropocentric notion that we alone have free will, and that humans are the only beings deserving of moral consideration).

“It is appropriate that through (religiously unspecified) faith (although clearly, the author is closely tied with the judao-christian faith) a scholar must believe what he/or she wants to do in research is not of "selfish ambition or van conceit," (Philippians 2:3) but of righteousness, based off of the premise that, "the righteous will live by faith."
Abstracts to (without parentheses):
It is appropriate that through faith, a scholar must believe what he/or she wants to do in research is (not of "selfish ambition or van conceit," but of righteousness,) based off of the premise that, "the righteous will live by faith."

So basically, through faith, someone believes that the righteous will live by faith. Argumentation, anyone?

The responder defines faith for us, but never says why faith based on a particular book should be trusted any more than say, my earlier post (or the work of someone like Richard Hanley).

“relative to our perception of self, we do have free will which can function with that of divine will. These aspects of will can coexist on different iterations of consciousness.”
“our perception of self” ?? whose perception? Who is to say that the ‘self’ exists? A critical look at the common perception of the self can be provided by Kant and Buddha.

Consciousness? Show me where it is, and what makes it different from non-consciousness such that it can participate in ontological spectrums that are distinctly separate from non-conscious ones.

It seems that the responder’s response to my argument against the coexistence of agent free will and theological free will essentially boils down to… “no, you’re wrong, because I believe it is so, and so do a lot of other people.” At this point I might do us all a favor by giving a reality check: just because you quote someone famous or lovable, the quote does not necessarily reflect a true statement.

The reference to the earlier post invites me to criticize said post for confusing epistemic justification with moral justification. Even if there could be a logical fallacy in the ‘no absolute truth’ perspective, that fallacy cannot be extended to the argument against absolute morality because each is a qualitatively different matter. Scientists can (and do) explain the illusion of objective morality by materialist, non-theological means. It brings me to my concluding point.

Belief in objective morality requires that one be a dualist. This means that in order to believe in objective morality, you must first believe that there is something that exists outside the physical entities of which we are composed and with which we interact. This outside constituent of existence is where we would find ideals such as morality, truth, etc. These cannot be found in the realm of physically measurable entities because those entities are the ones which are governed by deterministic physical laws (if one believes that these physical components are all that there is in the universe, then he would be a materialist). Determinism precludes free will, which precludes moral responsibility (determinism is not necessary, but sufficient for precluding moral responsibility). Something non-physical must enter the system in order for there to be any hope for objective morality. Science does not deal with the non-physical because it can be neither measured (proven) nor disproved. Science deals with things that can be reduced to physical constituents (such as the biological basis for apparently non-physical things such as emotions and thoughts). Objective morality thus cannot enter the arena of scientific investigation. Subjective morality (or what might more appropriately be called ‘adaptive behavior motivation’) is instead the motivation for “moral” decisions in science and in social interaction.

video games are the devil, w00t!

2005-06-29T09:34:00.001-07:00

"Games 'prime brain for violence'
Playing a video game triggers the same violent responses in the brain as actual aggression, researchers claim."

first off, playing a video game does not trigger the same violent responses in the brain as actual aggression-- playing a VIOLENT video game triggers violent responses. i dont need a phd to figure that one out.

furthermore, i dont understand how this is even worth writing about. this headline should be right next to the one that says, "Sad movies make people cry."

wow, im disapointed in BBC.

video games will cure cancer someday

2005-06-29T09:34:00.000-07:00

areas of study such as music, art, sociology, anthropology, philosophy, history, and many many more do not deserve monetary support b/c too many people in the world are dying of aids. we should all live as emotionless and cultureless robots, b/c dying is bad.

in any case, i am happy that i have found something to investigate and fight for, something that i enjoy and am very passionate about, something that will indeed contribute towards the larger society. i would hate to be the type of person, who does the same boring thing everyday, which is what other people tell them to do. then again some people are born to be cogs and others pioneers. it just sucks for those who wake up one middle-aged day and realize they haven't been really living for anything that mattered to them.

just wait and see. give me 5-10 years and video games, or interactive storytelling as it will be called, will be a large force in society. i have faith that i am working towards a cure for a disease much more infectious than aids and entirely more terminal than cancer, my research is towards curing apathy.

I'm assuming...the christian bible.

2005-06-29T09:33:00.000-07:00

>>"This assumes that the sun rising tomorrow is sufficient basis for carrying on with the status quo. The sun would still rise tomorrow if I decided to commit mass crimes against humanity (and club baby harp seals!), but I would not use the sun as justification for those actions."

I disagree with this interpretation of the authors title. I believe it is an old saying that is used to bring people into perspective about their own lives, that the probability of the things we do affecting the world going on the next day is fairy small. This is, of course, the summation of all the things that have ever been done since the existance of humans of every human. How many people out of those who have ever lived, actually needed to be alive in order for the sun to rise the next day?

From the original post, "The following essay will argue that the sun will still rise tomorrow, despite whether or not you contribute anything towards anything,"

This implication is saying that the sun will rise tomorrow, even if you do nothing to affect anything. Although, there may be scenerious to be contructed to disprove this (and it is not to say that no one has ever saved the world before, b/c how are to know?), but straight-forwardly, the author was merely saying that if we all died today, the sun (most likely) will still rise tomorrow. (As far as statistical truth, there is no reason for it to not rise, if we were all dead.)

>>“righteous will live by faith,” without telling us what righteous means in this context.

Perhaps a poor construction of the essay itself, however, the author defines both faith and righteous people in the essay.

"As righteous people, they are, however, living for justice and morality,"

This coincidentally also coincides with the merriam-webster definition 2a: "morally right or justifiable" and 2b: "arising from an outraged sense of justice or morality."

“Faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.” Hebrews 11:1

It is appropriate that through (religiously unspecified) faith (although clearly, the author is closely tied with the judao-christian faith) a scholar must believe what he/or she wants to do in research is not of "selfish ambition or van conceit," (Philippians 2:3) but of righteousness, based off of the premise that, "the righteous will live by faith." (Galatians 3:11)

>>"Science is a discipline which concerns itself with reason and empirical evidence to ensure validity."

And what is the ontology of science? Science is something we created to be able to systematically predict the world and its functionalities as precisely as possible. It is, at most, a pseudo-truth, a statistical truth. Every scientific theory is valid until proven wrong. Remember back when the world was flat? Reality is far bigger than our meager senses can percieve accurately.

>>"It depends on free will and theological will, which are mutually exclusive."

This is an entirely different discussion. In the authors defense, I'd like to say that relative to our perception of self, we do have free will which can function with that of divine will. These aspects of will can coexist on different iterations of conciousness. I believe it was C S. Lewis that used as example of a story writer, who writes half of a protagonist's adventure, puts down the book to rest, and then completes the story the next day. As far as the conciousness of the character (or the reader's perception of the character, if the reader should read straight through), it is one continuous line of events and experiences to break in the story, as the author did on his/her higher iteration of conciousness.

>>"According to what moral law?"

I'm assuming...the christian bible.

This matters to the world. Hence, our author’s conclusion is baseless.

I think the author was trying to say that if you are living for yourself, you might as well be dead. Similar to the late Martin Luther King Jr. who said, "A man who won't die for something is not fit to live." If you live for yourself, then you have 2 objectives: #1 is to live, #2 is to live in self gratification. In that case, you really aren't living at all, b/c #1 "you aren't as important as you think you are" and #2 the world is just that much bigger than you.

>>unprovavble notions of objective morality

In an example that campus renouned athiest, Professor Richard Hanley of the philosophy department gave: It is not morally wrong to physically harm and torture babies for the sole intentions of sexual arousal. Find me a right-of-mind person who agrees and if there exists none, then that is one aspect of objective morality.

I shall now refer the responder to an older post...

http://forum.asiaco.com/cgi-bin/forum/forum.cgi?c=msg&fid=udmcnair&mid=71

existential skeptic

2005-06-29T09:32:00.001-07:00

This is one of the more naïve and pejorative essays I’ve read. First I would like to comment on the overarching theme of the paper (“the sun will still rise tomorrow”). This assumes that the sun rising tomorrow is sufficient basis for carrying on with the status quo. The sun would still rise tomorrow if I decided to commit mass crimes against humanity (and club baby harp seals!), but I would not use the sun as justification for those actions.
Our author asserts that the “righteous will live by faith,” without telling us what righteous means in this context. “To live by faith” is a vague and loaded concept. I could have faith in something that is wrong. That there are several large pluralities of people who live their lives by mutually exclusive faiths (example: Judaism, Christianity, Islam, I Ching), signals that at least one, if not all of them, are wrong. Thus, our author’s definition of righteousness is logically inconsistent.

“Faith is all that should concern us” is a sentence that does not speak to science. Science is a discipline which concerns itself with reason and empirical evidence to ensure validity. Faith has nothing to offer in the way of validity. To the contrary, our author defines faith as “being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.” This is the opposite of science, and the opposite of reason by and large. If I am conducting a study that tests the efficacy of a medicine on a disease, should I have faith that it will work, without testing whether or not is actually does? After all, I hope that it will work. When we see no evidence that our test hypothesis is correct, should be believe it anyway? After all, we should be certain of what we do not see. These avenues lead to disaster.

"If it is the Lord's will, we will live and do this or that."

Here, we dive straight into the logical fallacy of the theological justification for free will. If indeed there was some powerful being with a will, he must know the actions of all of his creations, lest his omnipotence is compromised. Thus, he must know the one possible future. This flies against the concept of individual free will, which calls for more than one possible future. Our author says “Unfortunately, with our own free will, we are not obliged to walk a righteous route and have the freedom to be as selfish as we’d please.” Therein lies the fallacy of the argument. It depends on free will and theological will, which are mutually exclusive.
So we have two choices. We 1) do not have free will, or 2) do have free will. In 1), there could be no more moral responsibility ascribed to humans as there is to rocks and sand, for each is just as much a cause of their actions as humans. In 2), there exists no possibility of an omniscient theological entity which could foresee the actions of all living beings. (regarding the argument from quantum mechanics, which attempts to call upon the existence of unforeseeable random events at the particle level, randomness does not equal free will).

“All such boasting is evil.”

According to what moral law?

“if it is ourselves that we are trying to gratify, then it’s not like we’d have mattered to the world anyhow.”

If the president of the united states decided ( in order to gratify his ego) to engage in heavy warfare that escalates to nuclear destruction of a portion of the world, it will have “mattered” to the world. Suppose it was not warfare. Suppose it was merely Bob’s decision to make money to gratify himself. He invents a super efficient fuel cell that becomes the trade standard for all engine-operated vehicles. This matters to the world. Hence, our author’s conclusion is baseless.

The perspective on morality and “good & evil” that actually includes evidence and a theory is the argument for the selection of these traits by socio-evolutionary selection. I suggest readings by Michael Shermer and Richard Dawkins. Each of these authors are true scientists who do not appeal to fantasy or unprovavble notions of objective morality. Additionally, there is an entire branch of psychology (behavioral psychology) whose foundational ground is that all human behavior (and all animal behavior) can be reduced to a series of stimuli and responses. This extends into the physiological and biological sciences, which in turn depend on the chemical sciences, which reduces ultimately to physics. Physical laws determine the action of all particles in our universe, and we are comprised of those particles. Free will? Where does that get added into the mix. Objective morality? point to it. Righteousness? Stop trying to fool yourself, because you aren’t fooling me.

the sun will still rise tomorrow

2005-06-29T09:32:00.000-07:00

Research is the exploration of knowledge. This could be in the midst of old knowledge or at the frontier towards new. The question is whether or not research need contribute towards knowledge such that society benefits. The following essay will argue that the sun will still rise tomorrow, despite whether or not you contribute anything towards anything,

The point of this paragraph is to argue that you are not as important as you think you are. The following three points will explain why scholars and researchers need not be concerned with whether their work makes a contribution to the larger society, nor should they pursue their individual interests, however unusual or idiosyncratic those interests may seem. Firstly, "the righteous will live by faith." Unfortunately, with our own free will, we are not obliged to walk a righteous route and have the freedom to be as selfish as we’d please. This could lead scholars and researchers toward monetary objectives and/or objectives of prestige and recognition; video games, for instance, is widely driven by profit and largely recognized through pop-culture and the media. As righteous people, they are, however, living for justice and morality, regardless of how much they’ll fall short. Leading me to my next point, “faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.“ In other words, to be righteous is to live by faith, which means nothing if it is not accompanied by action. Finally, whether you choose to be a selfish or righteous scholar, the world will continue to spin and the sun will still rise tomorrow. The above paragraph argued that it is not the contribution that deserves the attention, rather it is the faith of a person in doing what they believe is righteous, actions that are believed to be an individual’s calling (and individual’s passion) allied with righteousness; the connection of this point to my thesis is that it is neither our contribution that matters nor our own passions (whether selfish or not), because in the end it is a matter of faith which may or may not amount to anything apparent, tangible, or gratifying. “Faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.”

In conclusion, we are not driven by our contributions, nor our passions; instead, faith is all that should concern us, as artists, scientists, athletes, scholars, researchers, and video game developers. For if it is righteousness that we live for, then we must have living faith which is accompanied by actions (actions of research, engineering, painting, charity, teaching, etc.), but if it is ourselves that we are trying to gratify, then it’s not like we’d have mattered to the world anyhow.

“Now listen, you who say, "Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money." Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead, you ought to say, "If it is the Lord's will, we will live and do this or that." As it is, you boast and brag. All such boasting is evil. Anyone, then, who knows the good he ought to do and doesn't do it, sins."

they dont need your dirty money

2005-06-29T09:31:00.000-07:00

The uneven distribution of wealth has left many nations in desolate poverty while others in wasteful abundance. Wealthy nations have been giving aide to the developing nations to reconcile this imbalance, yet poverty is still prevalent on the national level today. Is there more that rich countries can do to upgrade the living conditions in the rest of the world? The following essay will argue that this macro, international issue can only be absolved through micro, individual means. This is fundamentally recollected as the teaching: "the man with two tunics should share with him who has none, and the one who has food should do the same."

The point of this paragraph is to argue that the effects of poverty draw concern on the individual and personal level: the individually orphaned children, the individually widowed, the individually sick, although collectively, they may embody a poor nation; therefore, the solution is individual, personal, and not worth the effort in leaping through the needless hoops of institutionalization. The following 3 reasons will explain why it is not a mere matter of surrendering resources to where it is lacked. Firstly, as long as the hearts of people remain corrupt, the institutions which these people comprised will be corrupt, and the monetary efforts will be debilitated. Secondly, charity is just a utility to be utilized toward expressing love (which is the manifestation of a well conditioned heart), and by itself, money is meaningless-- it holds no compassion, no emotion, and no sympathy. Lastly, it is not the system that should be using us to aid the suffering; rather it should be us utilizing the system to make that difference. The above paragraph argued that it is misleading to consider this a matter of money, for money, in itself, is part of the institutionalized hoop of economy; rather, it is about love. The connection of this point to my thesis is that it does not matter if collectively we are contributing good, if individually we aren’t any less selfish.

In conclusion, it is not to say that the institutionalized structure of government is needless to the world, because it can most effectively organize, encourage, and motivate the hearts of those being governed. However, as Paul said in 2 Corinthians, “each man should give what he has decided in his heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion,” and as long as we keep distant and impersonal the sufferings of the collective individuals born into nations of poverty, nothing will change, b/c in the end, it is a matter of the heart. It is equally beneficial for the able to give and for the needy to recieve.

“From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked.”

Jars of Clay

2005-06-27T21:25:00.000-07:00

2 Corinthians 4
Treasures in Jars of Clay
1Therefore, since through God's mercy we have this ministry, we do not lose heart. 2Rather, we have renounced secret and shameful ways; we do not use deception, nor do we distort the word of God. On the contrary, by setting forth the truth plainly we commend ourselves to every man's conscience in the sight of God. 3And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing. 4The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. 5For we do not preach ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, and ourselves as your servants for Jesus' sake. 6For God, who said, "Let light shine out of darkness,"[a]made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.

7But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. 8We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; 9persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed. 10We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body. 11For we who are alive are always being given over to death for Jesus' sake, so that his life may be revealed in our mortal body. 12So then, death is at work in us, but life is at work in you.

13It is written: "I believed; therefore I have spoken."[b]With that same spirit of faith we also believe and therefore speak, 14because we know that the one who raised the Lord Jesus from the dead will also raise us with Jesus and present us with you in his presence. 15All this is for your benefit, so that the grace that is reaching more and more people may cause thanksgiving to overflow to the glory of God.

16Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. 17For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. 18So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.

Games 'prime brain for violence'

2005-06-24T18:01:00.000-07:00

Games 'prime brain for violence'
The men studied all played violent games regularly
Playing a video game triggers the same violent responses in the brain as actual aggression, researchers claim.

A team from the University of Aachen, Germany, asked men to play a game which required them to kill terrorists in order to rescue hostages.

They found brain mapping scans showed the same kind of activity as when people imagine being violent themselves, New Scientist reports.

Game players' may be more "primed" for aggression, experts warn.

The instinct to punch someone on the nose is pretty basic
Professor Guy Cumberbatch, Communications Research Group

The study, presented to the Organisation for Human Brain Mapping Annual Meeting in Toronto, Canada, follows on from other research which showed people who played violent computer games reported high levels of aggression and to have committed assaults and robberies.

The German team studied 13 men aged between 18 and 26, who played games for an average of two hours a day.

They asked the men to play a violent game while their brain activity was monitored using magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scanning.

The researchers monitored the game scene by scene, and watched how brain activity changed during violent interactions and calmer interludes.

It was found that, when violence was imminent, the cognitive - information processing - parts of the brain became more active.

Response patterns

During a fight in the game, parts of the brain which deal with emotion, including the amygdala and the anterior cingulate cortex, were shut down.

The same pattern has been seen in brain scans of people during acts of real aggression.

Dr Klaus Mathiak, who led the research, said since it was impossible to scan the brains of people involved in actual fights, this was the closest researchers could get to seeing what was happening in people's brains.

Dr Niels Birbaumer, from the University of Tubingen in Germany, suggested playing games regularly would strengthen certain circuits in the brain, and a regular player faced with a real life violent situation may be more likely to react aggressively.

The instinct to punch someone on the nose is pretty basic. I don't think it is influenced in any way by playing these games
Dr Guy Cumberbatch
Communications Research Group

But Jeffrey Fagan, a violence expert from Columbia University in New York, said the link between the brain and violence was complex.

He said: "The frontal lobe functions associated with violence have more to do with restraint than the arousal to action".

And Dr Guy Cumberbatch, head of the independent Communications Research Group in the UK, said: "If the findings in this study were the same as when people responded to imaginary situations, why is it any different to seeing violence in films or at the theatre?

"The problem is, it's very much a witch-hunt in relation to video games."

He added: "The instinct to punch someone on the nose is pretty basic. I don't think it is influenced in any way by playing these games."

video games and education notes

2005-06-22T13:46:00.000-07:00

Hi Sherol,

I read your notes on video games and education. I'm sure I don't have
the whole picture since I wasn't present for the presentation, but I
think I have the general idea you were trying to convey.

While I agree with some of what you said, such as education being in
"competition with entertainment for the attention of youth", and how
education sticks "to traditional approaches on teaching, while
technology is pushing for entertainment to be evermore stimulating."

But regarding your conclusion, "As our culture is ever-changing, so
should our attempts in educating the next generation to come. The
involvement of technology in the classroom should increase in
correlation with the rapid advancements in technological research.
Since education is resistant toward changing its approach, each
generation of students is growing more and more detached toward those
old-fashioned methods of teachings. Therefore, it is detrimental to
our society to overlook digital-entertainment as a means of
stimulating learning. Conclusively, we MUST integrate video-games into
the classroom and this will not occur unless more legitimate research
is conducted at Universities.",
I think that I either (1) don't understand how we would do this,
and/or (2) disagree that we -should- do this.

I recognize that entertainment changes and gets bigger, while
education continues to do the same thing, but I don't think that means
we have to change the education system.

I'm also not sure that making education entertaining would work or
improve it. For example, I don't think Medieval Philosophy -can- be
more entertaining than Kate Rogers teaches it, or that the differences
between private, protected, and public class methods -can- be taught
in a highly entertaining or highly stimulating fashion.

School is fun, but it isn't as exciting as watching Neo fight hundreds
of Agent Smith clones or as awesome as watching space marines blow
away dozens of aliens with automatic weapons (in the movie, Aliens).

Reading David Lewis's view of Modal Realism is exciting but it is very
different from watching the Terminator fire a shotgun at the T-1000,
or winning a clan match of Team Fortress or CTF.

Does what I've said make sense?
What are your thoughts on how we could incorporate excitement into
education in competitive ways to straight-up entertainment?

In Christ,
Mark Strobert

/*****************************/

the emphasis isn't on improving education; moreso on why is there such deprecation toward interactive media. I'm not out to cheapen education, rather embellish it. for the presentation, in particular, it was mainly emphasizing early high school and middle school education, so college would be a whole different ball game.

here is just one example (from university of alberta)

http://www.gamesconference.org/digra2005/viewabstract.php?id=226

my research is just on interactive storytelling as a media of its own (apart from video games, movies, and novels).

http://copland.udel.edu/~paladin/agents/

:: Research Goal :: (old)

2005-06-19T16:25:00.000-07:00

:: Research Goal ::

The uncharted possibilities of interactive media would be a
fruitful area of research, because of the intellectual stigma that
overlooks video games. This under-explored idiom can potentially express
literary genius and cinematic masterpiece through the creative development
of AI and VR. The field of entertainment technology has created a means
to see the world in ways that real life restricted, not that actions did
not yield consequences, but that one could always go back and discover the
correct or alternative way of doing things. Quite skeptical of the
cooperation between academia and entertainment, I hope to tie these areas
together through scholarship.
Dr. Selmer Bringsjord, a specialist in the logico-mathematical and
philosophical foundations of Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive
Science, asks, “is it possible to build dramatically compelling
interactive digital entertainment.” He describes it as a challenge to be
conquered by “seminal advances in the intersection of artificial
intelligence and narratives,” and more specifically the role of character
autonomy. Four primary aspects in character agents of interest are:
dialogue, mobility, personalization, and robust automata. Markku
Eskelinen, an independent scholar and experimental writer of ergodic
prose, interactive drama, critical essays and cybertext fiction, contrasts
with that of Dr. Bringsjord in his conclusion that “gaming mechanisms are
suffering from slow or even lethargic states of development, as they are
constantly and intentionally confused with narrative or dramatic cinematic
mechanisms.” The goal for this research is to observe the evolution of
these aspects within video games and uncover the correlation between
transient and intransient events from the player’s point of view.
The significance of this study is to answer the question, “how can
an interactive narrative intellectually and emotionally engage its user
while effectively communicating a series of volatile yet meaningful
events?” At one end of the spectrum, we’d find movies and theater; while
at the other, we’d find virtual playgrounds of finite causes with
corresponding effects. How do we optimize these two components such that
we have significant plot development in addition to personal sentiment of
the user? The scope of this research is within the artificial
intelligence of character development in virtual worlds; that is, the
dynamic personalities and emotioneering of these quasi-autonomous agents
and their importance towards non-ergodic story telling. It is the
purpose of this study to comparatively analyze the evolution of
intelligent agents and human-agent interactions within the field of
entertainment technology and its potential for constructing elaborate
worlds and inducing revolutionary experiences.

Thesis Outline

2005-06-18T20:22:00.000-07:00

I. Introduction - Attention/Need
+ Negative Video Game Stereotypes
+ Academic Disinterest in Game Development
+ Problems with this Situation
+ Potential of Video Games
+ Interactive Storytelling

II. Current AI in Video Games
+ Academic AI v. Game AI
+ Methods of AI - Branching, Scripting, etc.
+ Spectrum of Interactive Storytelling (FF X -> Sims)
+ Superficial Fusion of Game and Story (GTA San Andreas)
+ A Decade of Technological Evolution (Final Fantasy)

III. Future
+ If Books Had Come After Video Games
+ The Next Industry - Future of Computer Science
+ Why Virtual Reality Can Be Better Than Real Life
+ When is it Too Much? (Point of Diminishing Returns)
+ What Next? (Multidimensional Storytelling)

IV. Conclusion

phd

2005-06-18T16:37:00.000-07:00

Sherol,

It was great to meet you at AIIDE earlier this month. I hope your end
of the academic year is going (or went) well. I'm sorry that the
financial aid issue didn't work out with NCSU for admissions this
coming Fall -- I think you'd make a strong addition to the department
here. If you'd like to talk more in preparation for PhD applications
and research, please email me! If you end up making it to AAAI,
perhaps I'll see you there.

Stay in touch,

-M

abstract (revised)

2005-06-16T13:07:00.000-07:00

abstract (new)
The Fusion of AI and Interactive Storytelling

As technology progresses to be evermore stimulating, the entertainment industry has maximized on profitting from these advances. Educators, however, expect to stick to traditional approaches on teaching and fighting for the attention of students through oppressing the draw of entertainment. I propose that, not only do entertainment and education need not be in conflict, but that education is doing an injustice towards the generations to come by clinging to obsolete methods of teaching. Education is losing the battle: it stands no chance against the power in technology that drives entertainment. In particular, this research examines the status quo of the technology, namely AI, and its literary potential in storytelling. I hypothesize that the role that artificial intelligence has within interactive storytelling is entirely superficial and that more resources and research need to be invested in taking advantage of this conflict. Allowing technology to be profit driven will continue to direct research toward what consumers will pay for, taking forgranted the potentials of using technology to direct our society towards innovation, values, and creativity; instead, allowing the audience to dictate what technology can do to be most pleasing and instantly gratifying. Interactive storytelling will pioneer a new means of motivating and uncovering great passions, but not without effectively developing artificial intelligence for such objectives.

the last will be first

2005-06-16T10:25:00.000-07:00

Some people are handed opportunity after opportunity such that they can complacently coast through life. True passion was what evened those odds; unfortunately, the increased contrast between the advantageous and the not is merely the undeniable evidence of the decadence in motivation and the plague of apathy.

the man in the mirror

2005-06-16T10:11:00.000-07:00

Western education has continually been trying to reach equilibrium in the availability of opportunities towards students of all background circumstances. The following essay will argue that institutions of higher education need NOT use a class-based, “need conscious” approach to their admissions process in order to satisfy this upset, rather it is up to individuals to motivate those people of all cultures and classes.

The point of this paragraph is to argue that education can only be obtained by the few who know how to achieve it, or are motivated enough to figure things out the hard way. Education is the systematic process of training and informing each generation to come, as to prepare them with the knowledge of their society. The level of education (which, formally, is the degree) is up to the individual to ultimately decide in assessing what path in life to take and to a more implicit sense, the amount that society finds to be acceptably minimal (or average). Not everyone can benefit from education: some people don’t need that much knowledge, and others are better off learning what they need to know by their own means. The disadvantages arise for those who do not have that choice, and are disabled whether by not knowing of their opportunities or just insurmountable expectations because of their identity. For the disadvantaged, what they need are not a set of training wheels, because they are going to be falling off their bikes again and again regardless, and not some elbow and knee pads, because those scars and scrapes aren’t what prevent success; rather, they need the motivation to get back on and ride, in spite of the discouraging circumstance that they maybe the only one who can’t seem to steadily tread among their peers. Pursuing education will always be easier for some, but people need to stop complaining about the injustice and start valuing their scrapes and scars. When I recollect those times I’ve fallen again and again, I’m so grateful that I finally am able to keep my balance enough to build significant momentum. I am headed towards the direction of my peers but with the scars of 10,000 failures and the motivation to get up 10,000 times. The above paragraph argued that the uncharted path of education among the disadvantaged is not to be rectified collectively by guilty conscious of the advantaged, but individually by those who feel compelled, whether it is upon consideration of their own scars or not, to ride along side the inexperienced and to get them back up when they fall; the connection of this point to my thesis is self explanatory.

“A landowner went out early in the morning to hire men to work in his vineyard. He agreed to pay them a denarius for the day and sent them into his vineyard. "About the third hour he went out and saw others standing in the marketplace doing nothing. 4He told them, 'You also go and work in my vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right.' 5So they went. "He went out again about the sixth hour and the ninth hour and did the same thing. About the eleventh hour he went out and found still others standing around. He asked them, 'Why have you been standing here all day long doing nothing?' " 'Because no one has hired us,' they answered. "He said to them, 'You also go and work in my vineyard.' "When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his foreman, 'Call the workers and pay them their wages, beginning with the last ones hired and going on to the first.' "The workers who were hired about the eleventh hour came and each received a denarius. So when those came who were hired first, they expected to receive more. But each one of them also received a denarius. When they received it, they began to grumble against the landowner. 'These men who were hired last worked only one hour,' they said, 'and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the work and the heat of the day.' "But he answered one of them, 'Friend, I am not being unfair to you. Didn't you agree to work for a denarius? Take your pay and go. I want to give the man who was hired last the same as I gave you. Don't I have the right to do what I want with my own money? Or are you envious because I am generous?' "So the last will be first, and the first will be last."”

In conclusion, until we make robots to collect all the garbage, wash all our toilets, and grow all our corn, institutions need not balance this upset—let society figure itself out, and that begins with the man in the mirror.

makeup

2005-06-16T10:10:00.000-07:00

Sherol Chen – 2005 Senior Thesis Make-Up Assignment

Speaker: Patrick Kenny (kenny@ict.usc.edu)
Institute for creative technologies, University of Southern California
Game Developers Conference 2005, San Francisco, CA

1) What was the speaker's research question and how did he/she go about answering this question

The speaker presented his research on the question of how artificial intelligence can realistically model emotions within virtual humans and its applications in current military simulations. Following his introduction, he began to define the basics of a virtual human as it is defined by computer scientists, and directed the points of emphasis to coincide with his research. After establishing vocabulary, he then broke down the different characteristics of a virtual human by showing contrast between opposite ends of the spectrum, from dynamic to static (interactive to scripted). He called this the dimensions of a virtual human: (humans – characters), (realtime – non realtime), (autonomous – controllable), (advanced ai – scripted), (believable – realistic), (foreground – background). As an example, he showed the AI engine for Unreal Tournament, a first person shooter, and then shifts his talk toward the natural language processing field of study. He wraps up his presentation by showing the applications with a military training simulation called “Stability and Support Operations “ (SASO).

2) What question did you ask the speaker

After his presentation, I approached the speaker and asked him about a multidimensional approach to story-telling and narratives. I wanted to know how feasible he believed the concept of perspective switching could be in applications to the realistic emotional responses of virtual humans.

3) How did the speaker respond to your question.

He explained that this idea of multidimensional story-telling had the capabilities of expanding on the dimensions of time from the perspectives of characters and objects. The user would traverse a storyline from the perspective of an arbitrary protagonist, and afterwards, is able to switch perspectives to re-experience the exact same storyline (in regards to the procession of time), but having a significantly different experience. It is not the element of time that changes; instead, it is the protagonist that changes. So you, as the user, are always on the relatively “good” side; however, the current “good” guys could become the subsequent “bad” guys in the next run through the story. There has not been much research on this approach to story-telling, because the artificial intelligence of single-dimensional narratives is still incorporating up-to-date advancements in AI. Furthermore, as it is now, the only funding for this is from the government and is completely dedicated to the development of military simulations. Hopefully, this will carry over to non-linear story-telling in the near future.

2005-06-15T09:41:00.000-07:00

DVD FFVII: Advent Children priced, detailed
Square Enix's anticipated CG movie to hit Japan at a standard DVD price; limited edition will include an original anime featurette, PS game.

TOKYO--Square Enix has released additional product details on the DVD version of Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children in Japan. To begin with, the game-inspired, computer-animated film's running time will be 97 minutes, and it will sport Dolby Digital 5.1 audio. Aside from the movie, the Advent Children DVD also features a 30-minute documentary that outlines the original FFVII PlayStation game. In addition, it includes various trailers related to Final Fantasy, such as a 10-minute promotional video of the "Compilation of Final Fantasy VII." No new information on the Universal Media Disc version of the game was released.

The regular DVD edition of Advent Children will be priced at 4,800 yen ($45), standard for a DVD in Japan, and the first shipment of the DVD will come in a specially designed package. A limited-edition DVD will also be available for a hefty 29,500 yen ($275). The limited edition includes a toy figure of Cloud and his motorbike Fenrir, as well as an additional DVD that features an original FFVII anime short, titled "Last Order: Final Fantasy VII," and a special edition of the Final Fantasy VII PlayStation game. Both the normal and limited edition will be released on September 14. The full list of bonus items featured in the limited edition is listed below.

1. Cloud model figure with Fenrir motorcycle
2. Special DVD that includes the following four content
--Original Video Anime (OVA) "Last Order Final Fantasy VII"
--Making of documentary
--Feature: Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children (Venice International Film Festival version)
--Advent Children trailers
3. Reproduction of Advent Children script
4. cap
5. T-shirt
6. Keychain with serial number
7. PlayStation "Final Fantasy VII: International" with special-edition label

By Hirohiko Niizumi -- GameSpot
POSTED: 06/13/05 03:06 PM PST

abstract (old)

2005-06-14T10:38:00.000-07:00

The significance of this study is to answer the question, “How can an interactive narrative intellectually and emotionally engage its user while effectively communicating a series of volatile yet meaningful events?” At one end of the spectrum, we find movies and theater, while at the other end, we find virtual playgrounds of finite causes with corresponding effects. How do we optimize these two components such that we have significant plot development in addition to personal sentiment of the user? The scope of this research is within the artificial intelligence of character development in virtual worlds, that is, defining the dynamic personalities of these quasi-autonomous agents and their importance towards non-ergodic story telling.

abstract (new)

2005-06-14T09:30:00.000-07:00

The Fusion of AI and Interactive Storytelling

As technology progresses to be evermore stimulating, the entertainment industry has maximized on profitting from these advances. Educators, however, expect to stick to traditional approaches on teaching and fighting for the attention of students through oppressing the draw of entertainment. I propose, not only do entertainment and education need not be in conflict, but that education is doing an injustice towards the generations to come by clinging to obsolete methods of teaching-- education is losing the battle, b/c it stands no chance against the power in technology that drives entertainment. In particular, this research examines the status quo of the technology, namely AI, and its literary potential in storytelling. I hypothesize that the role that artificial intelligence has within interactive storytelling is entirely superficial and that more resources and research need to be invested in taking advantage of this situation. Allowing technology to be profit driven will continue to direct research toward what consumers will pay for, taking forgranted the potentials of using technology to direct our society towards innovation, values, and creativity; instead, allowing the audience to dictate what technology can do to be most pleasing and instantly gratifying. I believe in aspiring toward greater ideals, and in a world where apathy grows to be dangeriously infectious, that interactive storytelling will pioneer a new means of motivating and uncovering great passions, but not without effectively developing artificial intelligence for such objectives.

there is no objective truth

2005-06-10T10:28:00.000-07:00

Research can and MUST be objective.

Now this comment, "there is no objective truth," is the same paradox as the more commonly known "there is no absolute truth."

The question is not a matter of whether the truth can be unbiasly investigated, rather whether or not there exists an unbiased truth (objective truth, absolute truth, etc.)

If we are all subject to subjectivity, then nothing or everything we uncover is truth.

To say that "there exists an unbiased truth" and that "we are inescapably biased" is to say that we will never be able to contemplate truth.

To say "there does not exist an unbiased truth" is to say that everything in the universe is subjective, which is firstly, a paradox, and secondly, the dangerous implication that morals are possibly relative.

Therefore, for there to even exist research, there must exist an independent truth that we must have a means of revealing DESPITE our background circumstances (prejudices, biases, etc.), b/c the truth is what sets us free.

the truth will set you free

2005-06-10T10:26:00.000-07:00

Roland Fryer is an advocate for truth, its investigation, its validation, and its application, because of the need for identity that is dependent of human nature. Fryer’s investigation begins with the analysis of the social world through a scholarly method; this could involve a scientific, social scientific, or humanistic approach toward learning from the world. His past circumstances built character, but also a picture of the world, significantly less than ideal, leading him towards his passion of uncovering and shedding light on a world that is all too dim.

As a scholar, seeking the unbiased truth, Fryer takes into consideration all the possible (past and present) influences on “where the blacks went wrong.” He takes into account of education, culture, world history, genetics, and even his own past experiences. Through these lenses, he could see the world from various points of view and collect a larger, less partial, spread of data, demonstrating that there may not be one distinct source or one solely responsible agent to blame.

The divergent paths in academia highlight exclusive qualia of the world experienced. For instance, natural science (defined by Meriam Webster) is any of the sciences (as physics, chemistry, or biology) that deal with matter, energy, and their interrelations and transformations or with objectively measurable phenomena, while science is more generally considered knowledge or a system of knowledge covering general truths or the operation of general laws especially as obtained and tested through scientific method.

However, he cannot deny that which drives him is his identity, which pushes him to put these pieces together for the accurate picture of who he is and why he is that way (and also what the world is and why it is that way). As he states in the article, “My father screwed me over so bad that he made my emotions like a lever. I learned how to turn them off and on. And that’s what’s needed when you study race,” showing the relationship of how his identity affects his research of his identity.

Conclusively, we are not research robots, stoic and devoid of personal involvement in the questions of the universe that have yet to be answered, yet we cannot be driven by our own selfish motivations, answering questions out of our own lazy ignorance. We must establish a balanced relationship between our human nature and the unbiased truth, for they work together hand in hand, each one useless without the other. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free (as Jesus put it).

2005-04-15T14:13:00.000-07:00

Scientific conference falls for gibberish prank

15.04.05 1.00pm

CAMBRIDGE, Massachusetts - A bunch of computer-generated gibberish masquerading as an academic paper has been accepted at a scientific conference in a victory for pranksters at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Jeremy Stribling said today that he and two fellow MIT graduate students questioned the standards of some academic conferences, so they wrote a computer programme to generate research papers complete with nonsensical text, charts and diagrams.

The trio submitted two of the randomly assembled papers to the World Multiconference on Systemics, Cybernetics and Informatics (WMSCI), scheduled to be held July 10-13 in Orlando, Florida.

To their surprise, one of the papers -- Rooter: A Methodology for the Typical Unification of Access Points and Redundancy -- was accepted for presentation.

The prank recalled a 1996 hoax in which New York University physicist Alan Sokal succeeded in getting an entire paper with a mix of truths, falsehoods, non sequiturs and otherwise meaningless mumbo-jumbo published in the journal Social Text.

Stribling said he and his colleagues only learned about the Social Text affair after submitting their paper.

"Rooter" features such mind-bending gems as: "the model for our heuristic consists of four independent components: simulated annealing, active networks, flexible modalities, and the study of reinforcement learning" and "We implemented our scatter/gather I/O server in Simula-67, augmented with opportunistically pipelined extensions".

Stribling said the trio targeted WMSCI because it is notorious within the field of computer science for sending copious emails that solicit admissions to the conference.

"We were tired of the spam," Stribling told Reuters in a telephone interview, adding that his team wanted to challenge the standards of the conference's peer review process.

Nagib Callaos, a conference organiser, said the paper was one of a small number accepted on a "non-reviewed" basis -- meaning that reviewers had not yet given their feedback by the acceptance deadline.

"We thought that it might be unfair to refuse a paper that was not refused by any of its three selected reviewers," Callaos wrote in an email.

"The author of a non-reviewed paper has complete responsibility of the content of their paper."

However, Callaos said conference organisers were reviewing their acceptance procedures in light of the hoax.

Asked whether he would disinvite the MIT students, Callos replied: "Bogus papers should not be included in the conference programme."

Stribling said conference organisers had not yet formally rescinded their invitation to present the paper.

The students were soliciting cash donations so they could attend the conference and give what Stribling billed as a "randomly generated talk".

So far, they have raised more than US$2000 ($2806) on the internet.

- REUTERS

Games that make leaders

2005-01-21T14:44:00.000-08:00

Games that make leaders: top researchers on the rise of play in business and education
Jason Stitt and Les Chappell • Published 01/20/05
Print this article • E-mail this article • 39 comments
Madison, Wis. — If the last video game you played was Pac-Man, you might have missed the advances that turned games into immersive training tools for skilled professionals and leaders.

Three University of Wisconsin-Madison professors, among the top researchers in learning through game-playing, explained the advantages of games over traditional teaching tools Thursday evening.

See a video of the event, which was held in Madison by Accelerate Madison and WTN
Ed Meachan, CIO of the UW System, called their research one of the better-kept secrets of the university. But the games they study, such as Halo, Half-life, and Lineage, are anything but secret.

The $10 billion-a-year gaming industry has already eclipsed Hollywood box-office sales, said Constance Steinkuehler, a UW-Madison cognitive researcher, and is on track to beat the music industry and home-video rentals. About 37 percent of both men and women say they play online games, she said, and more play a variety of single-player games.

“When you consider that we have 50 percent who even vote, we’re not doing that bad,” Steinkuehler said.

She and fellow UW professors James Gee and Kurt Squire argued that these types of games are much more than mindless entertainment, and derivatives of them could be used in schools or for corporate training. They work with the Academic Advanced Distributed Learning Co-Laboratory at UW-Madison, a testing ground for learning games.

Video games let their players step into new personas and explore alternatives. Not only that, but people can try to solve problems they’re not good at yet, get immediate feedback on the consequences and try again immediately.

Gee said the ability to explore right away makes games more engaging than textbooks or lectures. In schools, “you have to read 500 pages of biology and then you get to do biology,” he said. “Of course you only actually read 200. [A video] game allows you to perform before you’re competent.”

Because games keep things “pleasantly frustrating,” Gee said, players have incentives to keep on improving their performance. That can lead to learning outside the game as well. After his son started playing Age of Mythology, he started reading more about real-world mythology, Gee said.

“It’s the next big thing just because teachers have tried for the longest time to grab students’ attention, teach them concepts such as science,” said Ankur Malhotra, chief operating officer at NeuronFarm, which makes Web-based games meant to improve reading skills. “Gaming deals with a lot of these concepts, as they learn about all the tools, classifications and what makes a civilization function… I think there are some real lessons to be learned.”

One of the biggest users of games as training tools is the U.S. Army, which released the free tactical game America’s Army to boost its recruitment and has worked with commercial game companies on a variety of other titles.

“Gaming is old as dirt in military culture,” Squire said. Now, though, video games are becoming a more viable alternative to mock combats in the field.

Games such as America’s Army and Full Spectrum Warrior—which is available commercially with a fraction of the features the Army’s version has—are part of a culture shift in the military, he said. They contradict the view that soldiers are cannon-fodder and bolster the Army’s new branding of itself as a high-tech, professional workplace.

In Full Spectrum Warrior, Gee said, players lead a team of soldiers and must keep them all safe by using the right formations and maneuvers. Losing even one means the game is over.

Gee and his colleagues would like to make similar games that let players be scientists or take on other professional roles. Squire has worked on a game called Biohazard in which firefighters must react to dangerous situations. They learn the most effective ways to, for example, evacuate people from a mall after a sarin-gas attack. Firefighters like the game and even play it over break because it allows them to be heroes, he said—and because the game characters are smartly dressed.

Read more about the use of games in health-care training and the Games for Health conference in Madison
Games also let players be producers rather than just consumers. Many recent games allow “modding,” the insertion of new plot-lines, graphics and characters, or even the creation of entirely new games.

Squire mentioned the strategy game Civilization III, as well as first-person shooters such as Half-life. Role-playing games such as Neverwinter Nights also allow players a high degree of control.

“You can use Neverwinter Nights as an application development environment,” said Preston Austin, chief architect at Clotho Advanced Media, Inc. The game includes an event-driven programming language that lets people set up their own complex plots and scenarios, which they can share over the Internet.

Parents and teachers have not seen all of the current crop of games as good for children—some say violent games lead to violent behavior—but the three researchers said they contain valuable learning technologies.

“We’re not pushing games as good or bad,” Gee said. “It depends on what you’re doing.”

Jason Stitt is WTN's associate editor and can be reached at jason@wistechnology.com. Les Chappell is a staff writer and can be contacted at les@wistechnology.com
See other articles by Jason Stitt and Les Chappell.

Talk back
Flaor:
Jan 21, 2005, at 8:23 CST
Great article, I am glad the event is getting coverage.
Hopefully someday we'll all look back at this and say this is where Wisconsin's World reknowned educational videogame industry began.

nathan stiles:
Jan 21, 2005, at 8:30 CST
I have long believed that games further education rather than hinder. I am a med student and think the idea behind the biohazard game is particularly interesting

mcp:
Jan 21, 2005, at 8:57 CST
“We’re not pushing games as good or bad,” Gee said. “It depends on what you’re doing.”

Violence isn't always bad, but using violence as a means to train someone is.
I'll only be interested in games that are realistic, extreme situations arn't needed. It's like killing a ant with a hammer.

m:
Jan 21, 2005, at 9:07 CST
Demons, guns, known gods and evil.... How could this really create a caring society ? The techniques are great but some of the topics, tools and
ideas are evil. That needs to change.

bob dobbs:
Jan 21, 2005, at 9:08 CST
you gonna trust your surgery to a surgeon trained only on video games and not books? I have news for you- the human mind is more powerful than any video game will ever be. By reading, you exercise the mind, so it can handle any situation that comes up. Video games only stimulate the sensory and motor skills, which leaves the mind weak since it wont have a base of data to deal with new and unknown situations.

The idea that video games are a legit way to train for anything other instrument panel driven activities (flying, driving) is ridiculous. Full simulators are another story of course- but consumer games are a joke.

Matt:
Jan 21, 2005, at 9:11 CST
Games are fine for teaching pre-cognitive reactions, which is why firefighting, army training, and that sort of thing works so well. If what you want to do is ingrain instinctual reactions, simulation works fine. The example of Neverwinter Nights is a bad one - now the student isn't *gaming* at all, but using a game as a *programming* platform. Are you going to teach the programming *inside* the game, or through some other mechanism? I totally believe that Neverwinter nights can be a great motivation for programming, but not a mechanism for teaching it.

Show me a game that can teach partial differential equations, that's also fun on its own and I'll change my mind.

hcw:
Jan 21, 2005, at 9:11 CST
To the above poster: maybe that's true for most first-person shooters, but what about RPGs games that require interaction and solving puzzles?

There's more to gaming than Half-life, despite that being what everybodys making a big deal about.

J-F:
Jan 21, 2005, at 9:27 CST
I disagree with the above statement. Books can be mentally stimulating, but so can video games.

On the other hand, books can only be mentally stimulating. They do not develop sensory or motor skills.

To be honest, I would rather be operated by a surgeon that played it than the one that read it.

keith:
Jan 21, 2005, at 9:33 CST
UW-Madison are not the only people researching the potential of games for learning - check out http://www.seriousgamessummit.com and http://www.seriousgames.org.

Some Call Me Tim:
Jan 21, 2005, at 9:36 CST
The ideology of a game can be adapted to to culture of the student; obviously religious zealots will not be inclined to allow teaching their kids outside their ideological idiom, unfortunately most of their idioms are so narrow as to allow only simulations of going to church and praying without wandering into the moral minefield of real life situations - se la vi. My children will eat theirs for lunch, because they won't cry when somebody says boo -- in the game, of course ;) If you find our imaginations repugnant, wait till you awaken and see our lives.

Dan:
Jan 21, 2005, at 9:44 CST
So what does the Army do when the video game hero gets in a real battle situation and fills his pants due to fear. Video games might simulate a real situation, but don't seem to simulate the real emotion one feels in that situation. Does the doctor that performed very well on a video game using a controller all the sudden have shaky hands and can't handle the unexpected when surgery occurs because it didn't happen that way in the game?
I think games along with true knowledge gained from study and books would be good tools together.

Tim:
Jan 21, 2005, at 9:46 CST
When I was a kid all the adventure/RPG games on computers required you to type out sentences. I was 4 years old and learning terms like "inventory" of my own volition, and went on to read books that most would consider far out of my age range (e.g., Lord of the Rings when I was 6 or 7). So I completely agree that games are not just evil time-wasters. Many of them are, no doubt, but games with high cognitive requirements for kids, or games with subject matter that stimulates interest in history are terrific. Anyone ever play Oregon Trail in grade school?
The one issue I have with things like simulations is that it is very hard to code for the type of unpredictability you would find in a real operating room or airplane. However flight simulators have been extremely successful, so I see no reason why you can't train a surgeon this way.

Shadow:
Jan 21, 2005, at 9:56 CST
An unexpected event can always be simulated, if they log enough hours. Who says that they are only going to run through one possible situation?

This is an excellent idea, and will possibly give people the right idea that video games are not always immature, or mindless. They require a great deal of consideration (take Myst for example). They involve the user, instead of show, and what is most important is that people will stay interested.

mike:
Jan 21, 2005, at 9:58 CST
I'm sorry but the majority of you guys seem to be missing the point. They werent mentioning this as an alternative to all other learning. They are hopeful that it can ADD to training and education that is already in place. To enhance it not to replace it. I believe that if used properly it can add a great deal to the learning process in just about any field that it is applied.

Steph V.:
Jan 21, 2005, at 10:04 CST
"To be honest, I would rather be operated by a surgeon that played it than the one that read it."

I agree with you! What the article says, is that by playing simulations, you could also get MORE interested in that field (ie: Age of Mythology). Playing AoM doesn't make you a historian, but reading afterwrads on the matter could very well lead you to studying History and become one. Everything is not Black & White as Mr. Bob Dobbs suggested above. And by ONLY reading on a topic, you won't be better at something than by ONLY playing/simulating it. Same applies to maths: you cannot learn all mathematical functions just by reading them, you have to try some on your own. Be it in a game or not, you have to DO it in order to perform better.

Chris:
Jan 21, 2005, at 10:14 CST
I think some may have missed the point of the article, espicially those that are imagining playing Half Life or Doom as a school assignment. The idea being presented is to use the technology: the graphics rendering of Half Life, the advanced scripting of Neverwinter Nights, and so on. These tools could allow the creation of content that is truly useful for learning purposes.

I would never, ever allow someone who's only read a book about surgery to operate on me. Heck, I can go to the library or purchase medical texts, but it doesn't mean I know what I'm doing. By the same token, someone who just played a game isn't going to be anywhere near qualified either. The hope is that books and specialized games could supplement each other.

While we're on the subject I'd like to address the few zelots who seem to be posting: I am a gamer. I played Doom at 10 years old, and Half Life before I made it to high school. I'm also sane, social, and don't own a gun. I'm not a violent person, and I have a firm grip on reality. Demons, guns, known gods and evil indeed. I seem to recall certain religons committing atrocities in the name of a certain god, but I don't think I'd hold the many responsible for the faults of a few. I'd ask the same in return.

Ed Bishop:
Jan 21, 2005, at 10:16 CST
It seems from some of these posts that people are assuming the logical extreme, but while at the event I at no time heard anyone say we should have our doctors in training play lineage and skip med school. I believe they argued that games (some types at least) can be a valid learning tool / cognitive experience to help people learn. They are not "The" substitute. They allow people to take risks they could not do in real life (an important contributor to learning) and do so cheaper than a real world simulation would do. If studies show that a surgeon who warms up with Monkey Ball before she operates or one who plays a few hours of video games a week (both valid published study results) show that the surgeon has a statistically significant smaller chance of (sometimes fatal) complications, I know who I'm going to want working on me. How about you? Same goes for combat medics and regular soldiers - games are a potential learning tool and if they don't totally prepare a soldier for the grim realities of combat, so what? If what they learn saves one extra life in a hundred, for once I count that as a win for the game, not just the player.

JBrew:
Jan 21, 2005, at 10:23 CST
I'm in high school,
and I'm glad someone's
finally standing up
to the common "video
games make murderers
" school of thought.

yurimi:
Jan 21, 2005, at 10:28 CST
"The techniques are great but some of the topics, tools and
ideas are evil. That needs to change."

Even violent games have their merits as kids and adults work through their frustrations in a controlled, fantasy environment.

frankly:
Jan 21, 2005, at 10:29 CST
I played a couple games once. I learned that I wasn't very good.

WGibson:
Jan 21, 2005, at 10:40 CST
As an Athropology major that is currently studying a videogame for it's story content, I'm glad a university is showing that there is more to videogames. I agree that they can be a valuable tool when coupled with other forms of learning.

August West:
Jan 21, 2005, at 10:49 CST
Dang, man.

I'm really excited by the prospect of the video game interface for educational advancement! I think that some of the people here (who seem so vehemently against the notion) probably haven't played many video games themselves.

I mean, crap man, has anyone ever played Diablo (D2X)? My wife started to appreciate the complexity of the game as I explained to her the different skill tree matrices and such. I play single player and feel like a champ. I play online and am "schooled" by some of these 14-year olds who know more about this game and its sundry errata than a college course in the same could afford!

I mean, think about it!

"Statistical Warrior II: The Rise of Regression"

"Hey Josh! You gotta come over quick! I just got factor analysis capability on my IB (Inferentials Barbarian)! It's killer, man! Only 200,000 more experience points and I'll get progressive adjustment!! Think about it...moderators!"

amnesia:
Jan 21, 2005, at 10:52 CST
Anyone who says games only exercise motor skills and don't exercise the mind is clearly an imbecile. Even simple arcade games like Pacman build reactive decision making skills - and more complex simulations like Civilization or SimCity promote a wide range of neurological skills. Studies have proven over and over that people who regularly play video games have quicker reflexes, better problem solving skills, and more creative cognitive skills than people who don't. MRI scans have shown brain activity is greatly heightened during game play - much more so than reading a book (which actually only exercizes a very small part of the brain by comparison). The comment about surgeons who only read books being more proficient is ridiculous - I read a recent study that showed that cosmetic surgeons who regularly played video games had a 35% less chance of failures/mishaps - because they had better coordination, better reflexes, and better problem solving skills. I know I definately wouldn't want to ride in a plane who's pilot had only read books and not spent any time in a flight sim. I know NASA would never send anybody up in a billion-dollar probe who had not gone through rigorous computer simulation. My 5 year old nephew has learned far more from educational software than from kindergarden -- in fact he's well above the reading/counting level of most of his classmates, mainly due to playing educational childrens software. MMORPG's often promote and reward teamwork and community effort - which also promotes good social behavior and teaches valuable cooperative skills that are essential in the real-world (why do you think every job description says "must have good communication skills - must be a team player"). Playing strategy games, like Warcraft or Command & Conquer, especially against others, promote more cognitive skills than I have room to mention here. There are far more options and decisions and problems to solve in your typical computer strategy game than in traditional strategy games like Chess or Go - are you saying Chess doesn't exercise the mind? That's funny, because for more than a thousand years, most of civilization has thought otherwise. There's also a logical dichotomy here -- if Chess is an accepted "brain booster" in real life, but computer games "don't exercise the brain", then what happens when you play chess on the computer? Does it magically loose all of it's benefits just because the board is represented electronically? That's absurd!

Sure, games like GTA are inappropriate for younger players. But I'm sick of people blaming the video game for bad parenting skills. If your child is too young to understand the content of mature games, then don't let them play it! You don't let them watch porn or snuff films do you? If your child is old enough to play those games but can't discern right from wrong, it's not because the game is evil, it's because you are a lousy parent! I'm sick and tired of video games getting a bad rap just because some parents can't control their children and don't take the time to actually be a parent to them. As a parent, it's up to you to give your child the knowledge to be able to properly sort out whatever data is given to them - whether in the form of a video game, movie, song, tv show, or any other media. If your child doesn't understand that killing people is wrong, or that in real life you can't just run up to any car in the street and jack it - don't blame the media, blame yourself!

One final point in my long rant. Everytime I read an article like this, I'm surprised that they always leave out one of the most glaring benefits of the gaming industry in general - the fact that the game industry is largely (indeed mostly) responsible for pushing the hardware industry to make things bigger, better, faster, and cheaper. You don't think nVidia and ATI spend millions each year trying to make faster and cheaper graphics chips so people can do their taxes with higher frame rates? You don't think hard drives are getting bigger, processors getting faster, ram becoming cheaper is all because of spreadsheets and the internet? Nope, it's because the computer game industry is constantly pushing the limitations of the hardware. So even if you don't like video games - you should be happy the rest of us do, because if we didn't, your computer would be much slower and more expensive than it is.

Final note: does this mean video games should replace books? Of course not! It means we should look at the benefits of gaming as a positive thing, and find a way we can create educational software that utilizes those benefits. I think the point of this discussion is not that we should have kids playing Half Life in the classroom rather than reading books - I think the whole point is that printed text is incredibly out-dated in our "multimedia age". Kids find textbooks boring, plain and simple. Kids find games interesting and engrossing. If we can find a way to utilize the benficial aspects of gaming to create an educational environment that kids WANT to learn in, then I think we'll have a winner.

UntamedPlayer:
Jan 21, 2005, at 10:53 CST
I note that I came to this thread through the Slashdot link title "Games: Games Better Than Books?". As titles go, this is misleading and inflamatory. Effective performance in any complex endeavor typically involves the fusion of theoretical understanding, analytical skills and instinctive reactions. Whether you are driving a car, surviving a streetfight, giving a speech, or handling an angry customer, theory an analysis are useful before and after, but not during. IMHO the opportunity to fail without consequence, analyze, adjust,and try again is priceless.

Ferry:
Jan 21, 2005, at 11:01 CST
Very good. Playing a videogame is like reading a novel. The only difference is that you (partly) write it yourself. For example Half Life 2. In this kind of game you really have to puzzle to get your way around. So, contrary to what is said before, videogames do not involve a passive brain. I think it will be the way to learn in future, giving more equality between people. Best would be to have a game extra to a book. So when you want to succeed in the first chapter of the game you need to have studied the first chapter of the book. This will be stimulating for those that don't like to read. An internet site under supervision of the teacher with the results (eg high scores) of the students on the subject will give competion between the students and will further stimulate certain students. For the ones that don't need all that, they can just do it the old fashioned way, just with the book.

GamingScientist:
Jan 21, 2005, at 11:04 CST
Something a RPG game like Neverwinter Nights can help people do is plan ahead! As your character advances in the game you make decisions about what professions to learn, skills to learn, etc. It can teach people how to build skills and how to think of where you want to be x years from now and what you have to do between now and then to get there. What would be great is if someone could take that game engine and simulate a 4 (or 5!) year college plan where your character takes different classes and then you see where their skills are at the end of it. What would be tricky or difficult is fitting that into a specific school's curriculum and having some way to assess whether your final character build is what you want or not (ie if you want to be a doctor vs if you want to be a mechanical engineer vs if you want to be a historian, etc). The author(s) of such a program would have to determine what skills sets are necessary for various professions, which wouldn't be that easy. But it would still teach college freshmen the value of planning ahead and how to apply what's a fairly basic practice in RPG video games now to their real life.

amnesia:
Jan 21, 2005, at 11:09 CST
Anyone who says games only exercise motor skills and don't exercise the mind is clearly an imbecile. Even simple arcade games like Pacman build reactive decision making skills - and more complex simulations like Civilization or SimCity promote a wide range of neurological skills. Studies have proven over and over that people who regularly play video games have quicker reflexes, better problem solving skills, and more creative cognitive skills than people who don't. MRI scans have shown brain activity is greatly heightened during game play - much more so than reading a book (which actually only exercizes a very small part of the brain by comparison). The comment about surgeons who only read books being more proficient is ridiculous - I read a recent study that showed that cosmetic surgeons who regularly played video games had a 35% less chance of failures/mishaps - because they had better coordination, better reflexes, and better problem solving skills. I know I definately wouldn't want to ride in a plane who's pilot had only read books and not spent any time in a flight sim. I know NASA would never send anybody up in a billion-dollar probe who had not gone through rigorous computer simulation. My 5 year old nephew has learned far more from educational software than from kindergarden -- in fact he's well above the reading/counting level of most of his classmates, mainly due to playing educational childrens software. MMORPG's often promote and reward teamwork and community effort - which also promotes good social behavior and teaches valuable cooperative skills that are essential in the real-world (why do you think every job description says "must have good communication skills - must be a team player"). Playing strategy games, like Warcraft or Command & Conquer, especially against others, promote more cognitive skills than I have room to mention here. There are far more options and decisions and problems to solve in your typical computer strategy game than in traditional strategy games like Chess or Go - are you saying Chess doesn't exercise the mind? That's funny, because for more than a thousand years, most of civilization has thought otherwise. There's also a logical dichotomy here -- if Chess is an accepted "brain booster" in real life, but computer games "don't exercise the brain", then what happens when you play chess on the computer? Does it magically loose all of it's benefits just because the board is represented electronically? That's absurd!

Sure, games like GTA are inappropriate for younger players. But I'm sick of people blaming the video game for bad parenting skills. If your child is too young to understand the content of mature games, then don't let them play it! You don't let them watch porn or snuff films do you? If your child is old enough to play those games but can't discern right from wrong, it's not because the game is evil, it's because you are a lousy parent! I'm sick and tired of video games getting a bad rap just because some parents can't control their children and don't take the time to actually be a parent to them. As a parent, it's up to you to give your child the knowledge to be able to properly sort out whatever data is given to them - whether in the form of a video game, movie, song, tv show, or any other media. If your child doesn't understand that killing people is wrong, or that in real life you can't just run up to any car in the street and jack it - don't blame the media, blame yourself!

One final point in my long rant. Everytime I read an article like this, I'm surprised that they always leave out one of the most glaring benefits of the gaming industry in general - the fact that the game industry is largely (indeed mostly) responsible for pushing the hardware industry to make things bigger, better, faster, and cheaper. You don't think nVidia and ATI spend millions each year trying to make faster and cheaper graphics chips so people can do their taxes with higher frame rates? You don't think hard drives are getting bigger, processors getting faster, ram becoming cheaper is all because of spreadsheets and the internet? Nope, it's because the computer game industry is constantly pushing the limitations of the hardware. So even if you don't like video games - you should be happy the rest of us do, because if we didn't, your computer would be much slower and more expensive than it is.

Final note: does this mean video games should replace books? Of course not! It means we should look at the benefits of gaming as a positive thing, and find a way we can create educational software that utilizes those benefits. I think the point of this discussion is not that we should have kids playing Half Life in the classroom rather than reading books - I think the whole point is that printed text is incredibly out-dated in our "multimedia age". Kids find textbooks boring, plain and simple. Kids find games interesting and engrossing. If we can find a way to utilize the benficial aspects of gaming to create an educational environment that kids WANT to learn in, then I think we'll have a winner.

dale:
Jan 21, 2005, at 11:10 CST
Im 40 years old and grew up in the video games are evil world for the last 30 years or so. Videos games are not evil, yes they can be over the edge, but thats why we have those things called parents. Remember them? Parents teach their children what is right and wrong and choose for them.
I personally let my children play video games a few hours a day, they can tell you more about the history of the game (and maybe some real history becuase of it) and the articles/stuff they are using. They can also learn to budget, save money to buy more things, the thoery that working for something pays off in the end (and sometimes it doesn't). Pong wasn't the devlis work, Asteriods didn't make me rob people for quarters, Galaxia Didn't turn me into a druggy. In fact they all turned me into a (i think) well rounded business man who works very hard to achieve his needs. sadly they never taught me to speel correctly.

Sam:
Jan 21, 2005, at 11:53 CST
Video games are a good supplement. Personally, I think textbooks teach the trivia, while videogames are the more in depth exploration. According to my Calculus teacher, a deep exploration of 1 thing's far better than knowing the surface of many (in grad school at lead). Although some skills learned in the games don't really get you anywhere in life (i.e. saving up 100k gold ever since you started the character and spending it all on the best weapon isn't really a good thing to teach), simulations are the closest you can get.
As for the med school students and residential trainees, perhaps an ER or OR game could be developed, and that could be a good place to practice for 3rd and 4th year students. It's better than failing on a real patient and getting yourself and/or the school sued. Perhaps just to add pressure, we could have a strict grading procedure based on video game aptitude (similar, but better than the way DDR grades the way you dance). It'd be hard to put in "the patient's life's at stake" situation and really make the student/trainee feel that, but an economic reason to perform well is still a good reason. That way they could get more of a feel for what it's like to operate under pressure, no pun intended.
Anyway, just my thoughts. I'm also a high school student so I wouldn't really know what's best, but videogames are like any public media; they're good if you use them well.

The Wooden Badger:
Jan 21, 2005, at 12:35 CST
I find this story very interesting. Education and true learning can truly be stimulated by game play. In some cases it can prove to be superior, in some inferior. In many cases a joint approach would be ideal. I find some of the comments interesting and some downright laughable. I'll pick on one and call it a day. I would not allow a surgeon to touch me that learned solely by book or game. I would much rather have a surgeon that learned by current methods. Having taken multiple anatomy classes in my college degree program, I can't even imagine a game that can come within lightyears of the experience of looking at many different cadavers and seeing how the body's parts sit next to each other and how amazingly different people can be from each other and the examples in anatomy books ( or the limited variety that would occur in a game). Games can be great, but there are significant limits on the "reality" they attempt to portray. This is doubtlessly true in many other fields and examples.

Jon:
Jan 21, 2005, at 12:58 CST
The key here is the emmersive environment that video games represent. Like movies and television but interactive. We now know that tv can b used for both valuable and worthless things. I agree video games can be similarly harnessed.
This has been long enough in comming. So long as it's done right videogames can become an invaluable resource.

Greg:
Jan 21, 2005, at 1:02 CST
The experience isn't the primary target for replacment here. Condensing book work and keeping interest in the mundane that's the primary focus.

kikimusume:
Jan 21, 2005, at 1:10 CST
it is a very misleading title and a poorly written article.

Barry Kelly:
Jan 21, 2005, at 2:52 CST
Interestingly enough, I finished reading "generation kill", the story of an emedded reporter in the latest Iraq war. One of the points he makes is that in WW2, a suprisingly high percentage of soldiers didn't fire their guns - even when faced almost directly with the enemy. Now-a-days, the ratio is extremely high. After a particular firefight the reporter went through (in generation kill), the soldiers were comparing it to GTA, a video game. I thought that was pretty interesting, the effect that gaming has had on those soldiers. From a military point of view, a good effect (the people are better at killing). From a civilian point of view, a bad effect (the people are better at killing).

ufoathome:
Jan 21, 2005, at 3:09 CST
To the above poster, I'm not sure if GTA would be a prototypical game to makeing people "better at killing." Frankly, a FPS would do a better job, but still, only on a psychological level. Even then, if you had any emotional reponse, I doubt games would actually deaden one's fear of killing in real life.

mercury:
Jan 21, 2005, at 3:13 CST
I think its fascinating to read this kind of research. One of the things that feels most lacking in educational environments is a non-intrusive interactive environment. Often a class setting is either too interactive, pushing the boundaries of a student's comfort levels, or not engaging enough.

The teachers I have had throughout the years have always tried pushed their students to interact, often saying that group interaction and class interaction simulate the real world, but as a young person, most people have an adverse reaction, because of the way this forced participation feels unnatural. It only seems logical that video-game type software, where the consequences of action and interaction don't seem so harsh, is a good direction to go.

Markian:
Jan 21, 2005, at 3:27 CST

It's the Next Big Thing (tm) is it?
Socrates was the Next Big Thing. So was radio. Moving pictures was going to revolutionize the way people taught and learnt. Television was going to change the classroom irrevocably; combined with the telephone, everyone would be able to learn at home, all the time. Universities and schools would be obsolete. Until the computers changed everything. It would never be the same after that, until the internet came along. The internet will make travel entirely outmoded.

It is a great relief to hear that it is actually GAMES that will change the world. As I do research at the University of Alberta with the GAMES group (www.cs.ualberta.ca/~games), I am both relieved and vindicated!

Jason:
Jan 21, 2005, at 3:35 CST
A video game could actually train soldiers to have faster and more accurate enemy-identification skills, thus reducing the number of civilian deaths. GTA is not that game, and can't be blamed for producing the opposite effect. It is the army's job to develop games (or other methods) that train soldiers to reduce wartime casualties for both sides (while still achieving victory). If the soldiers are killing civilians, then it's the failure of the army, not the failure of Rockstar games.

Marjee:
Jan 21, 2005, at 4:12 CST
As a student of the people that presented I would simply like to say that I am really glad that this semi-controversial topic is prompting people to talk about what learning is, what it means to "know" to problem solve, and how it is that we become good at things. One of the early posters made the embarrassing comment that once someone develops a compelling game that teaches differential equations-than s/he will be convinced. This shallow understanding of teaching and learning is the foundation upon we built modern schooling, and exactly the type of thinking the game research challenges.

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2004-10-26T14:44:00.000-07:00

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