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thomblake comments on Open Thread, December 1-15, 2012 - Less Wrong Discussion

5 Post author: OpenThreadGuy 01 December 2012 05:00AM

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Comment author: [deleted] 15 December 2012 11:48:24AM 0 points [-]

And I'm really boggled that a computer can play Jeopardy! successfully.

The first time I used Google Translate, a couple years ago, I was astonished how good it was. Ten years earlier I thought it would be nearly impossible to do something like that within the next half century.

Comment author: CronoDAS 15 December 2012 11:34:44PM *  3 points [-]

Yeah, it's interesting the trick they used - they basically used translated books, rather than dictionaries, as their reference... that, and a whole lot of computing power.

If you have an algorithm that works poorly but gets better if you throw more computing power at it, then you can expect progress. If you don't have any algorithm at all that you think will give you a good answer, then what you have is a math problem, not an engineering problem, and progress in math is not something I know how to predict. Some unsolved problems stay unsolved, and some don't.

Comment author: NancyLebovitz 15 December 2012 02:41:15PM *  0 points [-]

Is Google Translate a somewhat imperfect Chinese Room?

Also, is Google Translate getting better?