Saturday, April 12, 2014

[osammqrs] Looking for unusual

Is "noticing something unusual" something that humans will always do better -- more completely -- than computers?

"Unusual" requires knowing a context, and the entirety of context available to a human will never get fully programmed into a computer.  Vaguely: "Unusual" seems to require understanding the mechanisms behind the usual.  "Unusual" seems to require imagination.

However, it is interesting to imagine that computers might get better than humans at even this.  They will discover something unusual, interesting, and important that has been staring at us in the face forever, but no human ever noticed it.

Certainly, intelligence agencies such as the NSA mining vast surveillance databases for enemies of the government is working in this direction.

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