On Thu, May 9, 2024 at 2:15 AM Rob Freeman <[email protected]> wrote:
> On Thu, May 9, 2024 at 6:15 AM James Bowery <[email protected]> wrote: > ...> > > The origin of the Combinatorial Hierarchy thence ANPA was the Cambridge > Language Research Unit. > > Interesting tip about the Cambridge Language Research Unit. Inspired > by Wittgenstein? > I suspect much more by Turing's involvement with Colossus. As I previously mentioned. But this history means what? Spooks. Let me tell you a little story: Circa 1982, I was working on the first mass market electronic newspaper (joint venture between Knight-Ridder and AT&T) called VIEWTRON <https://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2702791&cid=39217853>. In something of a departure from my formal job description as futures architect, somehow management authority was bypassed to task me directly with implementing a *specification* for encryption in conjunction with the Bell Labs guys who were burning ROMs for the Western Electric NAPLPS terminal. The spec called for key exchange relying entirely on DES. The guy who mysteriously interceded as my manager pro temp -- the name escapes me at the moment -- rode me to implement the spec as stated without any discussion -- in *direct* violation of my role as future's architect. I brought up the fact that key exchange should be based on public keys and that the 56 bit DES key standard had already been shown to be breakable. Moreover, the controversy involved a questionable relationship between the DES standards committee, IBM and the NSA -- and that I didn't think the *future* of VIEWTRON's nationwide rollout should lock in such a questionable key exchange let alone 56-bit DES. That's when my "manager" told me he was "a former NSA employee" without further comment. Let me tell you another little story: The guy who invented Burroughs's zero address architecture and instituted magnet ink for banking routing and account numbers was a colleague of mine who sent me the following email in response to the announcement of the Hutter Prize <https://crypto.stackexchange.com/questions/34682/turings-still-classified-inference-engine-algorithm> Computerdom does not have a lot of art in inference engines (making > predictions). The most effective inference engine that I know of is the > software done for Colossus, Turing's code breaking "computer" of WWII. The > Brits still treat that software as classified even though the hardware has > been declassified for years. So far as I know, nobody outside of UK knows > the details of that software. My point here is that drawing understanding > from natural languages is a relatively small art practiced mostly by > cryptoanalysts. And my further point is that the natural language of > interest (be it English, Chinese, Mayan or ...) has a major influence on > how one (person or program) goes about doing analyses and making > inferences. From a practical perspective, the Hutter challenge would be > much more tractable for at least me if I could do it in Chinese. My first > PhD student was Jun Gu who is currently Chief Information Scientist for > PRC. His thesis was on efficient compression technologies. If you wish, you > can share these thoughts with whomever you please. Bob Johnson Prof. Emeritus Computer Science Univ. of Utah I met Bob as part of a startup which turned out to have strong connections to the NSA. The fact that Algorithmic Information is a fundamental advance over Shannon Information with clear applications in cryptography, combined with the fact that this has been known since the early 1960s in the open literature without it having any significant impact on computational models in the social sciences aka "prediction" of the consequences of various social theories, stinks to high heaven. ------------------------------------------ Artificial General Intelligence List: AGI Permalink: https://agi.topicbox.com/groups/agi/Teaac2c1a9c4f4ce3-M5f4ea79513dd780d7be1dafe Delivery options: https://agi.topicbox.com/groups/agi/subscription
