Comments on: Congruent Patterns

By: mir

mir — Tue, 18 Jan 2005 04:37:49 +0000

it’s so cold.

happy birthday my dear…

xoxox
mir

By: lewis

lewis — Mon, 17 Jan 2005 21:19:35 +0000

I’m not sure sure I’d call this learning either, at least not in the human (or animal) sense. For instance, your software will never be able to learn the distinction between a handclap and your voice. It will always seek to turn the clap into a word.

For me, the idea of learning is predicated on independent initiative. Does the software adapt its recognition protocols on its own? Or must you constantly program your corrections into it? Can we equate a database that is constantly being added to with sentient behaviour? In other words, where does the agency lie? Is IT learning, or are YOU programming it?

It might also have memory, but not in any intelligent sense. The software’s memory is basically a database of sound files mapped to a given lexicon and perhaps programmed with a set of syntactical rules. Human (or animal) memory is more than this.

This is not to deny the odd, occaisionally beautiful, and sometimes prophetic poetics of speech recognition (an uglier, but more accurate, phrase would be sound-to-text transformation) software. Philosophically, though, I always try to resist the slide into anthropomorphising the machine, and the subtle technological determinism that gives rise to it.

By: MK

MK — Mon, 17 Jan 2005 20:14:23 +0000

"Understand" is the wrong word, it’s true. My computer doesn’t have any intelligence, but it does have memory, and is capable of "learning" about me. Every time I interact with it, it stores the information about my characteristics and is forming a profile about me, in this case, the "voice model". So while it’s far from understanding, it might be a primitive sort of learning, though, non?

By: lewis

lewis — Mon, 17 Jan 2005 14:57:50 +0000

What do you mean when you say "understand"? Regardless of how much you train your computer, I’m afraid it will never UNDERSTAND you. The software you use may well get better at transforming the sonic patterns of your speech into the actual words you were speaking, but this is not the same as understanding.

My dog understands my speech far more than a computer ever could. I can say "Do you want to go outside?" in several different ways – excited, blase, goofy, etc. – and she’ll always get ready to go.

Understanding is a component of sentience, and computers ain’t there yet. You may know your computer, but it will never know you. The bird will, though. And so does my dog. And she misses you!

By: adam

adam — Tue, 11 Jan 2005 15:10:57 +0000

One of my favorite poems ever. Your article in Spacing was excellent. Will you be leading the charge for a grassroots group to come in and support something so necessary?

I hope so.

By: Shawn

Shawn — Tue, 11 Jan 2005 00:28:16 +0000

The Maltese were big fans of their Falcons – so much so they shot them all and they are no more.

I like that you relate the falcons to your work and bring in the Yeats bit. I often hear or read the lines:

"The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity."

But never with with entire passage. I suppose the Maltese had the passionate intensity – the irrational emmotion caused by too much sun. A different rupture results, perhaps.

By: hugh

hugh — Sun, 09 Jan 2005 22:13:04 +0000

ahh, wonderful…to what degree do our computers, or our falcons train us? that should give us pause to consider the control we have over our machines, or any technology…an imagined control in many ways, particularly if we don’T pay much attention to the things we "use" and what we "use" them for. what do they use us for?