Questões de Concurso

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Will computers ever truly understand what we’re saying?

Date: January 11, 2016

Source University of California - Berkeley

Summary:

If you think computers are quickly approaching true human communication, think again. Computers like Siri often get confused because they judge meaning by looking at a word’s statistical regularity. This is unlike humans, for whom context is more important than the word or signal, according to a researcher who invented a communication game allowing only nonverbal cues, and used it to pinpoint regions of the brain where mutual understanding takes place.

From Apple’s Siri to Honda’s robot Asimo, machines seem to be getting better and better at communicating with humans. But some neuroscientists caution that today’s computers will never truly understand what we’re saying because they do not take into account the context of a conversation the way people do.

Specifically, say University of California, Berkeley, postdoctoral fellow Arjen Stolk and his Dutch colleagues, machines don’t develop a shared understanding of the people, place and situation - often including a long social history - that is key to human communication. Without such common ground, a computer cannot help but be confused.

“People tend to think of communication as an exchange of linguistic signs or gestures, forgetting that much of communication is about the social context, about who you are communicating with, ” Stolk said.

The word “bank, ” for example, would be interpreted one way if you’re holding a credit card but a different way if you’re holding a fishing pole. Without context, making a “V” with two fingers could mean victory, the number two, or “these are the two fingers I broke.”

“All these subtleties are quite crucial to understanding one another, ” Stolk said, perhaps more so than the words and signals that computers and many neuroscientists focus on as the key to communication. “In fact, we can understand one another without language, without words and signs that already have a shared meaning.”

(Adapted from http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/01/1 60111135231.htm)

    HP TouchSmart 300: 20-Inch Multitouch All-in-One Has an HDTV Tuner
    Nate Ralph
    PC World - Dec 24, 2009 5:10 pm
    HP is no stranger to the all-in-one market, having churned out a number of multitouch-capable machines under the TouchSmart line. But at $930 (as of 12/23/2009), the HP TouchSmart 300 occupies a somewhat peculiar niche.
    At 20 inches, it's a bit small to serve as your primary media center, but it costs more than similarly sized budget all-inone PCs (20 inches or smaller). It also outperforms them all, scoring 98 on the WorldBench 6 test suite. This places the TouchSmart 300 well ahead of touch-enabled, budget-priced competitors like the 20-inch MSI Wind Top AE2010 (60), and tantalizingly close to pricier rivals like the 24-inch Sony Vaio L117FX/B (105). It also scored slightly higher than its larger sibling, the 23-inch HP TouchSmart 600 (92).
    The star of the show is HP's custom TouchSmart software. It offers full-screen, touch-friendly widgets for media playback, browsing, and manipulating photos, and for accessing popular Web applications like Hulu, Pandora, and Twitter. But while the software is typically quite responsive, we found its performance on the TouchSmart 300 to be a bit sluggish.

(Adapted from http://www.pcworld.com/reviews.html)

    HP TouchSmart 300: 20-Inch Multitouch All-in-One Has an HDTV Tuner
    Nate Ralph
    PC World - Dec 24, 2009 5:10 pm
    HP is no stranger to the all-in-one market, having churned out a number of multitouch-capable machines under the TouchSmart line. But at $930 (as of 12/23/2009), the HP TouchSmart 300 occupies a somewhat peculiar niche.
    At 20 inches, it's a bit small to serve as your primary media center, but it costs more than similarly sized budget all-inone PCs (20 inches or smaller). It also outperforms them all, scoring 98 on the WorldBench 6 test suite. This places the TouchSmart 300 well ahead of touch-enabled, budget-priced competitors like the 20-inch MSI Wind Top AE2010 (60), and tantalizingly close to pricier rivals like the 24-inch Sony Vaio L117FX/B (105). It also scored slightly higher than its larger sibling, the 23-inch HP TouchSmart 600 (92).
    The star of the show is HP's custom TouchSmart software. It offers full-screen, touch-friendly widgets for media playback, browsing, and manipulating photos, and for accessing popular Web applications like Hulu, Pandora, and Twitter. But while the software is typically quite responsive, we found its performance on the TouchSmart 300 to be a bit sluggish.

(Adapted from http://www.pcworld.com/reviews.html)

    HP TouchSmart 300: 20-Inch Multitouch All-in-One Has an HDTV Tuner
    Nate Ralph
    PC World - Dec 24, 2009 5:10 pm
    HP is no stranger to the all-in-one market, having churned out a number of multitouch-capable machines under the TouchSmart line. But at $930 (as of 12/23/2009), the HP TouchSmart 300 occupies a somewhat peculiar niche.
    At 20 inches, it's a bit small to serve as your primary media center, but it costs more than similarly sized budget all-inone PCs (20 inches or smaller). It also outperforms them all, scoring 98 on the WorldBench 6 test suite. This places the TouchSmart 300 well ahead of touch-enabled, budget-priced competitors like the 20-inch MSI Wind Top AE2010 (60), and tantalizingly close to pricier rivals like the 24-inch Sony Vaio L117FX/B (105). It also scored slightly higher than its larger sibling, the 23-inch HP TouchSmart 600 (92).
    The star of the show is HP's custom TouchSmart software. It offers full-screen, touch-friendly widgets for media playback, browsing, and manipulating photos, and for accessing popular Web applications like Hulu, Pandora, and Twitter. But while the software is typically quite responsive, we found its performance on the TouchSmart 300 to be a bit sluggish.

(Adapted from http://www.pcworld.com/reviews.html)

    CES 2010 Predictions: What Will Be Hot Next Year?
    12.23.09
    The tech industry is gearing up for January's Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, but what should we expect? Will recession woes continue to hinder major announcements or will someone surprise us? We asked our analysts to [VERB] a few predictions about [PRON] you can expect to see from CES.
    Laptops – Cisco Cheng
    Laptops and Netbooks at CES 2010 will be riding the coat tails of Intel, which has already announced new processors and chipsets in "Arrandale" (for laptops) and "Pinetrail" (for netbooks). So this year you'll see processor brand names such as Intel Core i7, Core i5, and Core i3 instead of the soon-to-be exiting Core 2 Duos.
    With netbooks, it'll still be the Atom processor, but around it will be a different supporting cast and a more energy efficient one at that, promising over 10 hours of battery life.
    Not all clamshells will have an Intel processor, though. This year's CES 2010 will give rise to a new class of netbooks, called SmartBooks and tablets.
    SmartBooks will run some variant of an ARM processor, with Qualcomm being a heavy favorite. They will not run a Windows operating system (Linux, most likely) and promise to cost as little as $200 per device. The term tablet is similar to SmartBooks in parts and software, only it won't have a physical keyboard, or at least one that's permanently attached. Tablets will take the e-book reader space to the next level and hopefully have more success than MIDs − the previous term for touchenabled netbooks without a keyboard.
    Desktops – Joel Santo Domingo
    The netbook revolution of 2009 has benefitted the desktop space. The same power-saving processors and motherboard chips from netbooks are now showing up in a plethora of ultra small nettop PCs.
    While these desktops do not promise better battery life, they do promise smaller, quieter systems, which can be hooked up to large displays, like the 50-inch HDTV in your living room.
    Don't count "traditional" desktops out though: they're still the go-to PCs in a business setting, particularly since they're less fragile and easier to service than laptops. Besides, traditional workers who live in cubicles don't need the portability of a netbook or notebook PC. They're going to get smaller, but desktops will still be on workers' desks for quite a few years to come.

(Adapted from http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2357541,00.asp)