The Worst Thing Ever
As old as as earthbending itself.
SEEEEEECCCCCRRRREEETTTT TTTTUUUUNNNNEEELLLL! YEEEEEEAAHHHH!
THROUGH THE MOUNTAIN!
SECRETSECRETSECRETSECRET TUNNELLLLLLLLLL
Isaac Newton Fun FactsIsaac Newton (1642-1727) was without a doubt one of the most important scientists of all time, if not the most important. Here are some fun facts about ol’ Ike:
- Newton became a professor of mathematics at only 26.
- Newton practiced Alchemy.
- Newton was elected as a member of parliment. His membership lasted only a year.
- Newton earned the title of Warden of the Royal Mint.
- Newton oversaw the recoinage of the whole country.
- Newton was knighted because of his political activites.
- He was named after his father who died three months before Isaac was born.
- Isaac was born early. He was so small he could have put him in a quart jug.
- Isaac’s father could hardly write his name.
- Isaac was one of the worst in his class until a bully at school kicked him. Isaac challenged him to a fight even though he was smaller. He won. That wasn’t enough for him, he decided to be better than the bully at school as well.
- Isaac liked to draw, his room was even colored on the ceilings and walls.
- Newton was born on Christmas.
(via spiral-star)
Adaptive Roots
The Hair of Geniuses
Artificial Intelligence Could Be on Brink of Passing Turing Test
One hundred years after Alan Turing was born, his eponymous test remains an elusive benchmark for artificial intelligence. Now, for the first time in decades, it’s possible to imagine a machine making the grade.
Turing was one of the 20th century’s great mathematicians, a conceptual architect of modern computing whose codebreaking played a decisive part in World War II. His test, described in a seminal dawn-of-the-computer-age paper, was deceptively simple: If a machine could pass for human in conversation, the machine could be considered intelligent.
Artificial intelligences are now ubiquitous, from GPS navigation systems and Google algorithms to automated customer service and Apple’s Siri, to say nothing of Deep Blue and Watson — but no machine has met Turing’s standard. The quest to do so, however, and the lines of research inspired by the general challenge of modeling human thought, have profoundly influenced both computer and cognitive science.
There is reason to believe that code kernels for the first Turing-intelligent machine have already been written.
“Two revolutionary advances in information technology may bring the Turing test out of retirement,” wrote Robert French, a cognitive scientist at the French National Center for Scientific Research, in an Apr. 12 Science essay. “The first is the ready availability of vast amounts of raw data — from video feeds to complete sound environments, and from casual conversations to technical documents on every conceivable subject. The second is the advent of sophisticated techniques for collecting, organizing, and processing this rich collection of data.”
Woodrow Wilson, 1922
(via spiral-star)
