This is a question I’ve been thinking about a bit lately:

If you had a computer that was as smart as a human, what would you do with it?

It almost seems obvious; everyone wants a computer that has human level intelligence, people have been working towards that goal for literally 40 or 50 years, but what would they do with it if it was suddenly dropped on them?

OK, some clarification. It’s a currently modern computer that is good at doing all the things computers are usually good at (arithmetic, finding files, storing lots of information) but it also happens to be really good at doing the sorts of things humans are usually good at. You know, making an ‘educated’ guess, pattern matching, seeing links and generally being partially intuitive.

It would not have any special hardware, it wouldn’t be able to speak for example. It would look just like a computer, except for this extra bit.

So, what would you ask it? What would you do with it?

I think I can’t actually answer this question as I’m not really a computer consumer anymore. Because of my job a computer is no longer just a tool, it’s an end in itself. So for my purposes, I guess I’d want it to be able to write code really well. But seriously, what would you as a computer consumer want it to do?

Throwing this one open. Please comment or email me with your ideas, because I really do wonder…