AIs are get­ting closer and closer to pass­ing the Tur­ing test. Note that every AI man­aged to fool at least one human judge.

Sci­en­tists at the Uni­ver­sity of Read­ing tested five machines to see if they could pass them­selves off as humans in text-​based con­ver­sa­tions with peo­ple. The test was devised in 1950 by British Math­e­mati­cian Alan Tur­ing, who said that if a machine was indis­tin­guish­able from a human, then it was “think­ing”. One robot, Elbot, came close on Sun­day by reach­ing 5% below the pass mark. One of the machines in the Tur­ing Test No com­puter has passed the test by fool­ing 30% of its human inter­roga­tors No robot has ever passed the Tur­ing Test, which requires the robot to fool 30% of its human inter­roga­tors. Dur­ing the exper­i­ment, five arti­fi­cial con­ver­sa­tional enti­ties (ACEs) com­peted in a series of five-​minute long, unre­stricted con­ver­sa­tional tests.

BBC NEWS | UK | Eng­land | Berk­shire | Test explores if robots can think

The cool part here is that the tech­nol­ogy that goes into pro­grams like Elbot can be used in con­junc­tion with voice recog­ni­tion to make devices that under­stand vocal instruc­tion and can even ask for clar­i­fi­ca­tion when they need it. Put that kind of tech into a car-​based GPS, and you’re well on your way to KITT…

Looks like the hon­ey­moon is already over for Chrome.

After its launch to a frenzy of news cov­er­age Chrome peaked with a 3.1% share of the browser mar­ket. Since then it’s been a steady decline, down to just over 1.5%. And it looks like it will stay that way.

Has Google’s browser peaked already? — Short Sharp Sci­ence — New Scientist

This isn’t actu­ally all that sur­pris­ing. It takes a while for some­thing enter­ing a crowded mar­ket with well-​established play­ers to gain mar­ket­share. The only rea­son peo­ple maybe expected Chrome to do bet­ter was because of the behe­moth Google name. As the arti­cle points out, Inter­net Explorer’s cut of the pie didn’t budge at all since before Chrome launched.

I tried to like Chrome, I really did. I could live with­out the exten­sions, even ad-​blocking. But what drove me from it was that in the end it felt like exactly what it was: a beta. A real beta, not like Gmail. Chrome lacks pol­ish, as it were. It locked up on me fre­quently and tended to get really con­fused if I had flash ani­ma­tions play­ing in mul­ti­ple tabs, which is prac­ti­cally a given when you don’t have ad-​blocking.

In the end, though, this might be part of Google’s mas­ter plan. They said up front that if Chrome got Fire­fox and IE to copy its inno­va­tions, they’d have done their job. If the web expe­ri­ence over­all improved, Google didn’t care if peo­ple used Chrome or not. IE8 beta 2 iso­lated tabs in sep­a­rate processes. Fire­fox 3.1 will allow users to drag tabs between browser win­dows. And both sport upgraded and much faster JavaScript engines. Mis­sion accom­plished, Chrome.

Jason Per­low has an inter­est­ing arti­cle over on ZDnet about how the eco­nomic cri­sis might spur IT inno­va­tion to save costs. He’s focused mostly on a top-​down, enterprise-​focused “how the heck can we afford this dat­a­cen­ter” per­spec­tive, but it got me think­ing about netbooks.

Before long y’all are going to be as tired as my RL friends of hear­ing about net­books. I’ve recently pur­chased an HP 2133 Mini-​note, and it has com­pletely changed how I approach using a com­puter. I really think these small, cheap, “under-​specced” lap­tops are going to change com­put­ing. And it occurs to me that they might have appeared at a his­tor­i­cally per­fect moment.

The thing about net­books is that they can be so small and cheap pre­cisely because they don’t do as much as a “real” lap­top. Now over time the def­i­n­i­tion of a real lap­top has changed to the point that my writ­ing partner’s 15” lap­top has more power and bet­ter gam­ing per­for­mance than my desk­top, but that’s beside the point. Net­books are good enough to do about 80% of what you’d want to do with a com­puter. They’re great at email, surf­ing, light media (for instance, as I write this in Win­dows Live Writer, I have Out­look and Fire­fox open as well as tunes in Win­dows Media Player; works fine). In other words, they’re the per­fect sec­ond or kid’s PC for most fam­i­lies. As long as you’ve got one big desk­top in the home for the other 20% work, why would you buy any­thing but net­books from then on?

As we slowly stag­ger into the hol­i­day shop­ping sea­son, expect to see net­books sales sky­rocket while sales of desk­top and larger lap­tops tapers off.

Eco­nomic cri­sis as a tech­nol­ogy change agent | Tech Broiler | ZDNet.com

And sore losers, too, appar­ently. And the elec­tion hasn’t even hap­pened yet.

DENVER (AP) — Democratic Party offi­cials say a sec­ond brick has been thrown through a win­dow at Demo­c­ra­tic Party head­quar­ters in Den­ver. Spokesman Matt Far­rauto says the brick had the word “mav­er­ick” writ­ten on it.

9NEWS.com | Colorado’s Online News Leader | Dem head­quar­ters van­dal­ized by ‘mav­er­ick’ brick

It’s sad, really, that reac­tions like this (not to men­tion cries of “trai­tor!” and “kill him!” when Obama is men­tioned at McCain ral­lies) is what passes for Repub­li­can “Joe Six-​pack” com­men­tary. It’s not sur­pris­ing, but it is sad. It’s not sur­pris­ing because it’s become increas­ingly obvi­ous over the last decade or so that if you’re the kind of per­son who might throw a brick or drink any­thing that comes in a six-​pack, you have absolutely no busi­ness being a Repub­li­can in the first place. The cog­ni­tive dis­so­nance of any­one mak­ing under a mil­lion dol­lars a year who con­sid­ers them­selves a proud mem­ber of the GOP must be nearly crippling.

News­flash for the anony­mous brick thrower: John McCain and Sarah Palin don’t give a toasted damn about you. You’re noth­ing more than igno­rant can­non fod­der for their big money back­ers. Come to the Democ­rats. We’ll not only wel­come you with open arms, but we’ll actu­ally work for your own best inter­est. Think about it.