From Pushkar Piggott
Further to the look at the hunt for artificial intelligence (18 May, p 40), Pentti Haikonen claims that we will never create such a machine using software. The problem is not software, but when a system presents words to a user.
For example, in 1966 computer scientist Joseph Weizenbaum wrote a relatively trivial system that managed, more or less, to maintain one side of a conversation. He was appalled to find that users attributed intelligence to it, and the artificial intelligence field never really got over this embarrassing success.
Taroona, Tasmania, Australia
