It is now possible for machines
to learn how natural or artificial systems work by simply observing them,
without being told what to look for, according to researchers at the University
of Sheffield. This could mean advances in the world of technology with machines
able to predict, among other things, human behaviour. The discovery takes
inspiration from the work of pioneering computer scientist Alan Turing, who
proposed a test, which a machine could pass if it behaved indistinguishably
from a human. In this test, an interrogator exchanges messages with two players
in a different room: one human, the other a machine.
The interrogator has to find out
which of the two players is human. If they consistently fail to do so – meaning
that they are no more successful than if they had chosen one player at random –
the machine has passed the test, and is considered to have human-level
intelligence. The discovery could also be used to create algorithms that detect
abnormalities in behaviour. This could prove useful for the health monitoring
of livestock and for the preventive maintenance of machines, cars and
airplanes. The next step is to reveal the workings of some animal collectives
such as schools of fish or colonies of bees.
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