For a while now I’ve been hearing that Moore’s Law will eventually produce real artificial intelligence, which many people expect will result in the Singularity. Nevermind that last part for now; I claim that the first part has already happened. I call it google. Whenever I say this in conversation or when speaking, most people go “pshaw” and change the subject. Maybe they’re thinking about AI like Asimov’s robots, autonomous and independent. Google isn’t that.

But look at this:

A crossword-solving computer program yesterday triumphed in a competition against humans. Two versions of the program, called WebCrow, finished first and second in a competition that gave bilingual entrants 90 minutes to work on five different crosswords in Italian and English.

Crossword software thrashes human challengers Tom Simonite, NewScientist.com news service, 31 August 2006

WebCrow uses a dictionary and looks in a database of known solutions, as well as using some heuristics. But it has a special sauce:

WebCrow performs a search using key words extracted from the clue. It can usually find the answer by looking at the small previews that appear with the search engine results, but it can scan whole pages if necessary. Words of the right length that crop up most often in the results are taken to be possible answers.

When DeepBlue beat chess grandmasters, that was considered a form of artificial intelligence. How is this different? Continue reading →