Do Computers think?

The relatively new invention of computer technology has raised interesting philosophical questions: Are computers thinking things? Do they have the potential to be thinking things? Should they be considered persons?

Super Computers The first one was built during WWII, and it was called ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Calculator) Designed to predict the accuracy of military weapons It took ENIAC less than 30 seconds to do calculations that it took humans days to figure out It weighed 30 tons and filled an entire room Looked more like piles of cash registers than todays computers

Today all of its functions could fit onto one microchip Retired in 1955, but while in operation it replaced many human thinkers by doing the same work faster and more efficiently.

Another famous super-computer is Deep Blue Deep Blue was built and programmed by IBM to play chess Played two tournaments against Garry Kasparov, arguably the greatest chess player ever, one in 1996 and one a year later in 1997. Smaller than ENIAC –filled a small moving van

Could contemplate 200,000,000 chess moves per second Kasparov “commented that he was playing the match against Deep Blue to preserve human dignity” Kasparov won in 1996 but lost in 1997, he maintained that humans were helping Deep Blue too much and that he wasn’t really defeated by the computer

Watson is the most recent super-computer, also built by IBM Watson is a “Question- Answering computing system” It is basically a trivia machine, capable of answering questions posed in ‘natural language’ In 2011, Watson competed on Jeopardy against Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i-vMW_Ce51w https://www.ted.com/talks/ken_jennings_watson_jeopardy_and_me _the_obsolete_know_it_all