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Tech-Op-ed May, 2021 SOUNDING OFF


By Michael Skinner Editor


Matter that Matters T


he Imitation Game, now widely known as the Turing Test, is a clever conceptual experiment designed to judge whether or not a machine is smart enough to think. Conceived by Alan Turing


in 1950, the idea is to pose questions to a computer, consider its re- sponses, and then decide if it seems to be “thinking.” Basically, if the machine answers in a way that is indistinguish-


able from a human being, it is considered to be intelligent. This sim- ple game has captivated generations of computer scientists, philoso- phers and mathematicians, as well as anyone else with an imagina- tion, like me. Three decades after Turing presented his paper at the Universi-


ty of Manchester in which he described this test, a more difficult question emerged. American philosopher John Searle illustrates it in his thought experiment The Chinese Room. Imagine you are in a box with two small slots, one to your left


and the other to your right. Somebody outside slips a piece of paper in from the left, which you pick up. On it are some characters written in a language you cannot understand, in Searle’s example Chinese. You have a book of instructions in front of you from which you


are shown to examine the characters on the note, match them to oth- er characters in the book, write the new characters, and pass the note out through the slot to your right. The problem is that you or whoever is in the box cannot under-


stand what is on the note either before or after it is altered and passed back out the other side. However, to the person outside put- ting in the first note and perhaps running around to the other side to see what you have written on it, you may have just unwittingly an- swered a question, like “What is your favorite color?” Maybe the char- acters that you were shown to write on the note mean “Blue.” At any rate, the person outside might assume that you are, in fact, intelli- gent. They have no way of knowing how their note was transformed and the answer they received was perfectly understandable in their language. Now scale up this imaginary operation. Imagine you and 10, or


you and 100, or you and a million others are in the box. Obviously a much larger box. Each of you has your own little conveyor upon which notes flow to and away from you. Maybe management has been smart and divvied up you and your colleagues so that each of you has only one single character to translate, or to throw away if it does not match your particular instruction book. Your translation factory can now handle much more complex in-


puts and outputs. For instance, you all collectively might be optimiz- ing white’s strategy in a game of chess. You might be finding the op- timal route from New York to Los Angeles by car. You might be iden- tifying a slight mutation in a single strand of DNA out of the whole human genome. This is fantastic for the person on the outside who plays chess, or


needs directions, or who is developing a cure for a hereditary disease. Meanwhile, you, still in the box, have not the slightest understand- ing of either the individual bits of information you have translated or of the sum of the data and its ultimate meaning. Turing began his presentation on computer intelligence at the


University of Manchester with the phrase “I propose to consider the question, ‘Can machines think?’” The machine might not have the agency to answer for itself. Yet somehow, when we ask ourselves that same question, we answer “yes.” r


PUBLISHER’S NOTE


By Jacob Fattal Publisher


an end to the challenges brought on by the pandemic in sight, we look forward to meeting in person at one of many live trade shows and ex- hibitions scheduled for later this year. A few weeks before our April/May issue went to press, the U.S.


Investing in the Future T


Federal Government unveiled its somewhat innocuously named American Jobs Plan, designed to boost American infrastructure, manufacturing and technology innovation. The plan comes with a price tag of roughly $2.3 trillion over the next 10 years. About a quarter of that enormous sum is slated to be used to im-


prove U.S. transportation, including highways and bridges, public transit, rail, accommodations for electric vehicles (EVs), and air and sea transportation. The proposal also includes the elimination of all lead pipes used to deliver drinking water, renewing the national elec- tric grid and supplying high-speed broadband to every American. Around 20 percent of the funding is aimed at research and devel-


opment, manufacturing and workforce development. A slice of that is dedicated to the National Science Foundation (NSF), which is tasked with creating a technology directorate that will focus on fields that in- clude semiconductors and computing, communications technology, advanced energy, and biotechnology. Another portion of the plan’s spending is to be put toward up-


grading research infrastructure nationwide, including both brick- and-mortar facilities and computing capabilities. These funds would be split between federal R&D agencies, such as the Department of Energy, and academic institutions. Domestic manufacturers stand to benefit from this proposal.


With a greater focus on American R&D and onshore manufacturing, our workforce has a better chance of retaining the best and the brightest, and driving the high-tech industry forward with renewed vigor. r


hey say you have to spend money to make money. We are grate- ful for the overwhelming support we have received from you, our readers, regarding the new look and feel of U.S. Tech. With


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