Machines Beat Humans on a Reading Test
At some point we’re going to start asking the same questions about humans. Do humans really understand what we read, or have we just picked up weird tricks that happen to work?<p>(When you read a novel, the experience of reading the novel is different for everyone. It’s like being on a rollercoaster or amusement park ride. Everyone has roughly the same stimulus but a different mental landscape and a different reaction. Our response to the book is largely a response to our own experience of reading the book, and only partly a response to the content of the book itself. This distinction isn’t just sophistry. Are we prepared for machines that react to books in ways that are completely alien to our own reactions?)