Thoughts on "The Stupidity of Computers"
It takes a lot of work to instruct a computer to do anything. In “ The Stupidity of Computers” (2012), David Auerbach describes the process of programming be ing “laboriously precise ” , yet somehow not precise enough. In discussing early search engines such as Northern Light, AltaVista, Lycos, Yahoo, etc., Auerbach mentions that these sites had poorly ordered results and people had to sift through multiple pages to find any relevant information (Auerbach, 2012) . There was progress with programs like Ask Jeeves , SHRDLU , and ELIZA which could narrowly attempt to answer users’ questions and perform tasks. MGonz took a stab at mimicking human language (Auerbach, 2012) . It somewhat successfully did this through the usage of slang, profanity, and persistently prodding the chat user , however, it had no understanding of what the user was actually saying (Auerbach, 2012) . Auerbach (2012) explains that though these advancements are impressive, th...