The computer - Computers are getting smarter by the day. Computer programs at research labs are constantly learning anything that the programmers are feeding them with. Voice recognition engines are developed but feeding the program with thousands of different voices from entire towns so that it could pick up patterns in speech, accents and slangs and learn to reconigse them. OCR (optical character recognition) programs are picking up new tips and patterns as it observes the different styles of writings from its ever-increasing database. Smarter programs are now able to classify pictures of objects it never saw before into different categories in real-time by studying their shapes and textures or by observing similar patterns in the picture's coding.
The rate of learning computers using smart programs has a big advantage that is they can share their data between different computers. Data and results achieved first by other computers by trial and error or by observation of patterns can be copied directly to other computers, hence increasing their rate of learning.
Since the memory of the computers are absolute (either recorded or deleted), computers need no adapting when they are loaded with traditional programs and are asked to run them. However, some smart programs are capable of learning from their mistakes and recording the best solution to any problems it faces. (an example is the household robot,cye ( created by Henry Thorne) which would memories the way around a new house without any help simply by trial and error; banging into walls and barriers and drawing a map of the landmarks it has banged into)
Computer learning techniques seem to have taken the right pushes at the right areas, especially the step towards learning to learn by using of the two most important senses, sight and sound. It would not be overstatement to say that computers would in a decade’s time be able to learn simply form observation and