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Loebner Prize winner doesn’t believe in Turing Test anyway

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Yesterday saw Reading University here in the UK playing host to the annual Loebner Artificial Intelligence Prize event – a contest based around Alan Turing’s famous benchmark for artificial intelligence that can really think, namely whether or not it can successfully imitate human communications.

The bronze medal (for fooling a quarter of the judges) went to Elbot, a chat-bot program created by Fred Roberts, but Roberts himself seems to be not so impressed by Turing’s theory:

“I don’t think it’s anything like thought,” he said of Elbot’s conversational prowess. “If you know a magic trick, you know how it’s done, it’s not magic anymore. Sorry to be so pessimistic.”

With the caveat that I have no expertise in cognition or expert systems, I’m inclined to agree with him. [via The Guardian]

Does Not Equal

Benchmark

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Benchmark - Does Not Equal

Does Not Equal is a webcomic by Sarah Ennals – check out the pre-Futurismic archives, and the strips that have been published here previously.

Futurismic readers in or near Toronto, take note: Sarah is going to be at the Kelp Queen Press table at the Royal Sarcophagus Society‘s bazaar on October 19th with her serialized novella, “Supervillain,” and she’s been accepted into Speakeasy’s one-night Comics Show at the Gladstone on November 6th.

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Magnetic currents and efficient memory

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Japanese physicists have found something called the Spin Seebeck Effect that could lead to practical magnetic batteries:

Essentially, this spin-segregated rod now has two electrodes and serves as the basis for a new kind of battery that produces “spin voltage,” or magnetic currents, which have been difficult to produce. With this tool, physicists can work toward developing more kinds of spintronics devices that store information magnetically.

Magnetic information storage is inherently more efficient than storing information electronically because there is no waste heat.

This is an interesting development. There seems to be a lot going on in the world of practical applications for quantum dots, quantum cryptography and spintronics. I suspect it will be one of those areas that heralds a lot of unexpected innovation over the next few years and decades.

[image from Ella’s Dad on flickr]

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Friday Free Fiction for 10th October

I don’t know about you, but I’m planning to spend this week assiduously avoiding watching the news. A big batch of free fiction should help…

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Again, only the one super-shorty from Manybooks:

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Most of Feedbooks‘ output appears on Manybooks first… but Feedbooks offer more versions and a much better interface, and that’s market forces, folks. So here’s the links:

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Paul McAuley‘s still churning out the free stuff; here’s The Quiet War, chapters six and seven.

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Subterranean Online has posted the second instalment of Chris Roberson‘s “Mirror Of Fiery Brightness”

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This week’s offering from Strange Horizons: “Swan Song” by Joanne Merriam.

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Via SF Signal: “The Transhuman Singularity” is a science fiction virtuality space opera by Michael Blade

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At The Future Fire:

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Tor.com has an original short story from one of my personal favourite authors, Rudy Rucker: “Jack and the Aktuals, or, Physical Applications of Transfinite Set Theory”

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Two new pieces from SpaceWesterns:

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And let’s end with a handful of Friday Flash:

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And that’s your lot, folks. Keep those tip-offs and plugs coming in – deadline is 1800 GMT every Friday. In the meantime, have a great weekend!

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Terry Pratchet visits Second Life, understands derivative works as fan activity

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The latest speculative fiction author to pay a visit to the metaverse was none other than Terry Pratchett, who dropped in to Second Life to talk about his new novel, Nation. [via NewWorldNotes; image from linked Your2ndPlace transcript]

Your2ndPlace has a transcript of the question-and-answer session, in which Pratchett revealed that, although he is aware that copyright laws forbid them, he sees metaverse recreations of characters and items from his work as legitimate fan activity, and doubts there is much the law can do about stopping it happening:

Dedric Mauiac: What are you views on people in second life creating people, places, and things from your books and either giving or selling them to other players?

TerryPratchett Morpork: It would be interesting to see what the law could do about Second Life! Regrettably for you, copyright and trademarks exist everywhere, but in reality I see this sort of thing as fan activity.

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