Question: How will you make computers more intelligent?!

Duncan Hull answered on 17 Jun 2010:

There are lots of ways of making computers more intelligent, because despite being very fast, they are actually really really stupid.

One important method is called “machine learning” – this is a set of techniques that is widely used to allow computers to change their behaviour based on the data they are given.

A second method, is to try an encode knowledge in a way that computers can use, for example through reasoning. This is one approach we are currently experimenting with. We are trying to encode knowledge in software so that computers can reason with it more intelligently.

A simple example, If you tell a computer that “All chemicals are blue”, and that “Aspirin is a chemical” then the computer can work out that “Aspirin is blue” – in this case the reasoning is wrong because our first two statements aren’t correct – but I hope you get the idea.

So we’re working on getting the statements right, so that computers can work out useful things for us – this is a very primitive form of intelligence.