The Post does not fear our new computer overlords. (Their jokes aren't as good as ours.)

You knew all these, right? We bet Watson did.

Here are the answers.

1. If you are a computer (or a human), how do you pass the Turing Test?
   By making your fellow conversationalist believe you are human. (Not so easy these days, even for some humans.)
2. What set of rules did Isaac Asimov devise for artificial beings to follow?
   The Three Laws of Robotics. (Quote them and you get a geek smiley.)
3. What key term was coined at a Dartmouth University conference in 1956?
   Artificial Intelligence.
4. What chilling cinema AI was created by Stanley Kubrick with the help of MIT AI guru Marvin Minsky?
   HAL.
5. At the same time movie AIs were scaring the bejabbers out of cinemagoers, a real mobile robot could be stopped in its tracks for an hour by, say, an unexpected mouse running by. What was this slow-moving 1969 robot's name?
   Shakey the Robot. Good name.
6. Why was 1973 called the 'AI Winter'?
   AI funding was slashed in the US and UK, due to fears that the research wasn't going anywhere.
7. What was the title of AI specialist Rodney Brooks' ground-breaking 1990 book that rethought the AI problem?
   Elephants Don't Play Chess. Which proves something, we're not sure what.
8. What computer milestone was achieved in 1997, and why did it make a Russian angry?
   Deep Blue beat Garry Kasparov.
9. What does Roomba do, and what's the name of the company that makes it?
   It hoovers, and it's made by iRobot. As you'd know if you helped with the housework.
10. On what occasion did Ken Jennings famously say, 'I for one welcome our new computer overlords'?
    On losing to IBM's Watson at Jeopardy! How trivial is this pursuit, anyway?

Share these fun facts with your educated friends. And help us figure out how to trick world leaders into taking the Turing Test. We believe that some of them could be usefully replaced with Watson and friends.

Dmitri Gheorgheni

06.02.17 Front Page

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