Visions Chapter 3

1. What delayed the computer revolution for years and is responsible for the peculiar evolution of these technologies, leaving curious gaps which are only now being filled by software writers?

A.) Obsession with cold war secrecy.

B.) Communism.

C.) Hackers

D.) Viruses

2. The author states that at the from 1988 until the time of the writing of the book the internet has grown by what percent every quarter?

A.) 10%

B.) 20%

C.) 40%

D.) 80%

3. The invention of the internet is compared to what other great discovery?

A.) Gutenberg’s movable type.

B.) Isaac Newton’s theory of gravity.

C.) Electromagnetism.

D.) Germ theory.

4. Which of the below represent the “potholes, ruts or detours" on the internet which need to be repaired?

A.) Bandwidth.

B.) Interfaces

C.) Personalized agents and filters

D.) All of the above.

5. What form must a signal take in order to be able to clean it up and modify it in thousands of ways?

A.) Compressed

B.) Analog

C.) Digital

D.) Three-phase

6. What is the big problem with developing a computer that can take dictation?

A.) Decomposing the human voice into component sinusoidal waves.

B.) Typing as fast as a person can talk.

C.) Understanding what they are hearing.

D.) Vocabulary.

7. What mechanism do the most successful intelligent agents use?

A.) They combine or “mate" to pass on their “genetic information" (i.e. the human user’s likes and dislikes) to the next generation of agents.

B.) They are modular to make them easier to upgrade.

C.) They are designed with special hardware.

D.) They are designed in the COBOL language.

8. What is the name of the computer that beat Kasparov at chess in 1997?

A.) Chess master

B.) Deep Blue

C.) Deep Thought

D.) Chess Wizard

9. What is the name of the expert system that surpassed the ability of the average doctor to diagnose meningitis?

A.) GPS

B.) Mycin

C.) Computer Diagnostician

D.) Medi-Comp

10. What is the name of the computer that Douglas Lenat is trying to give common sense?

A.) COG

B.) GPS

C.) Kismet

D.) Cyc

Visions Chapter 4

11. Rodney Brooks notes: Insects have immensely slow computers (compared with the computers AI researchers use) with just a few hundred neurons, and yet they fly around in real time and avoid stuff. What does he attribute their success to?

A.) Mother Nature

B.) A homunculus

C.) Organization

D.) Predestination

12. What is the OPPOSITE of an autonomous machine?

A.) An independent machine.

B.) A machine with free will.

C.) A bugbot.

D.) A pre-programmed machine.

13. From 2010 to 2020 there may be robots that can learn from their mistakes. They may have _____________ systems to reinforce positive acts and prohibit others.

A.) Accounting

B.) Spinal

C.) Pain and pleasure

D.) Ethical

14. When a robot’s camera scans an image into dots, what process is missing that would help the robot understand what it is looking at?

A.) pattern recognition

B.) intuition

C.) visual field

D.) perspective

15.) NetTalk can teach itself to do what almost from scratch?

A.) Read proofs

B.) Read C++ programs

C.) Read Fench

D.) Read and pronounce English

16.) What is the unifying principle determining how a neural net works?

A.) minimizing energy

B.) finding the right answer

C.) guess then test

D.) C++ programs

17. Kaku uses the “focuser" concept to analyze __________________.

A.) computational efficiency

B.) processing power

C.) resource management

D.) emotions

18. What does Kaku say is an example of an existing, conscious neural net?

A.) bugbots

B.) human beings

C.) expert systems

D.) NetTalk

19. When will the question of whether a machine can think be resolved?

A.) 1952

B.) When someone builds a thinking machine.

C.) Never, it has been proved that machines can never think.

D.) 2022

20. What is the third level of consciousness?

A.) organism monitors itself and its environment.

B.) carrying out well-defined goals like survival.

C.) the ability to set one’s own goals.

D.) having emotions.