Man Vs Machines

The experts mentioned in the article are very confident about human intelligence… They

do not believe that scientists will ever build a computer that rivals human intelligence...

For them, what is so special about human beings /what makes them unique is their capacity

to create and to have feelings such as pride, empathy, fear… The article insists on human

capacity to switch to /turn on “survival mode”, which is the capacity to surpass oneself, to

mobilize several skills at the same time when absolutely necessary… for instance when sitting

an exam or taking part in a competition, a sporting event, etc.

Another feature characteristic of human beings is “the sort of thing that makes song, romance,

smiles, sadness and all that jazz” (l. 45), which a computer can’t copy (and which the

journalist has difficulty in defining in words other than “sort of thing”!)

The fact that computers could become smarter can be quite scary... If computers keep

getting smarter, there might come a moment when they are capable of something comparable

to human intelligence...Will computers turn on humanity and annihilate us? For some, this question sounds like a

nightmarish SF story… For others it is a very disquieting issue…. In 1997, IBM’s Deep Blue defeated Gary Gasparov, the world chess champion... This

victory was already saluted as a significant step forward in the challenge machine vs man...

However chess rules are well-defined and relatively simple...

What makes Watson particularly advanced and baffled most observers is its ability to

understand sophisticated sentences and to answer questions with ambiguous clues…

So IBM has taken the development of intelligent computers one step further, in a new

computing era in which machines will increasingly be able to learn and understand what

humans ask...

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