Do Androids Read Newspapers?

Do Androids Read Newspapers?

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Artificial intelligence, or AI, has come pretty far in the last few years - much more then anyone really expected it would - and yet somehow, we seem to be just as far from truly intelligent systems as we ever were. No doubt, the great author Isaac Asimov would be impressed with what we have managed to accomplish, especially considering how many of his predictions have come true. However, we still haven't got any positronic brains, or thinking machines such as he suggested.

So while our computers cannot talk to us, cannot think, or act as an intelligent being, they do in many ways act at least semi-intelligent. Consider the web-spider. Not a true spider, by any means, but rather a computer program designed to browse the internet and identify key pages and even phrases.

While androids cannot talk, or even walk, you might be able to make a case that they can read the news. Depends what you mean by read really. As spiders become more advanced, they are becoming increasingly useful, and increasingly dangerous. Their powerful search capability, designed for good, can also be used for evil. Or simply to annoy.

Computer programs can now be taught to not merely search the internet, but also to use forms and interact with webpages. Everyone who runs a website wants visitors, but if you are running an online business you don't just want visitors- you need them.

Having hundreds of robots running through your website is not just useless, but actively unhelpful, as it will make it impossible to tell just how many real humans you get as well as using up all your valuable bandwidth. Although you can put a file on your server to tell robots you do not wish them to access it, it is only the law abiding ones that will obey it, and these are not the problem.

The answer to this is the one thing that a human can do easily, but no robot ever could Optical recognition. Computers cannot read a picture, so if you simply ask the visitor to copy some text from a small picture into a box, then you will immediately block the robots from entering. This is known as CAPTCHA, and is becoming extremely common, precisely because it is so effective.

All you have to do is install a simple program onto your website, and it will produce a small image with altered text. The visitor has to type that text into a box before they can log in, or otherwise interact with a form. This will block any robots from using it, as the robot will not be able to read the text.

So, can your computer read the news? Well, yes, as long as there isn't a CAPTCHA in the way. Unfortunately, it will be a while yet before any computers can truly be considered intelligent, and even longer before we see any real androids so I suppose I have to conclude with, no, robots really cannot read newspapers.

About the Author:
The author, Oleg, is an expert on CAPTCHA design. Click to find out more about his revolutionary new CAPTCHA Plugin technology.



Article Originally Published On: http://www.articlesnatch.com


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