It’s man vs. computer at Israel’s ‘Science Night’

Who’s smarter — man or machine? The definitive answer could come Monday night during the seventh annual “Night of the Scientists” taking place at 12 universities and museums across the country.

All the venues will open up labs and facilities to visitors, offering lectures, meetings, and coffee klatches with some of the biggest names in Israeli science.The event features activities for all ages and interests, such as a science lab for little kids (at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev), a seminar on practical “kitchen chemistry” (Tel Aviv University), a viewing of the first computer in Israel (Weizmann Institute), and a trivia quiz that will finally — hopefully — decide once and for all whether computers or people are smarter (broadcast to all participating insitutions).

Called the “Turing test,” after the test originated by British researcher Alan Turing, who is considered the father artificial intelligence, Monday’s trivia test will present questions to four participants: Maxine Fassberg, CEO of Intel Israel; Yitzchak Ben-Yisrael, head of Israel’s space program; Israeli model Adi Neuman; and a young fellow called Jonathan Bonzel, representing Israeli students.

The questions, presented by Israeli television personality Avri Gilad, will include historical, trivia, and intelligence questions. One of the participants will have received the answers from a computer, while the others will rely on their own knowledge. Members of the audience will have to guess which answers were genuine and which computer-generated.

“In some of the questions, like factual or historical ones, we could expect the computer to supply the right answer, possibly more accurately than the answers given by human participants,” said a spokesperson for the Science and Technology Ministry. “But other questions may not be so simple for the computer, especially the ones involving Israeli culture that people who grow up here just seem to know — that are not written down anywhere definitively.”

For example, who invented Bamba? That’s a tough one even for Israelis, and may just be the question that proves that people are smarter than computers. Humans took it on the chin last year when IBM’s Watson computer handily beat the all-time champions on the American quiz show Jeopardy, ostensibly proving that computers are our masters, at least in quiz show capability. Maybe humans can give computers their comeuppance on Science Night in Israel.

Some of the other interesting events include a seminar on game-making at Hebrew University’s Givat Ram campus, together with members of GameIS, the Israeli gaming forum; a review of ongoing research projects at IBM (Haifa University); a workshop on cryptography and secret encoding of digital information (Bloomfield Science Museum); a 3D printing workshop (Tel Aviv University); robots in action (Madatech); and much more.

Events will take place at the aforementioned institutions, as well as at the Open University in Ra’anana, Hebrew University, the Bloomfield Science Museum in Jerusalem, Madatech in Haifa, Haifa University, and the Sami Shamoon Academic Engineering College in southern Israel. In addition, the Weizmann Institute is sponsoring satellite events at cafes and community centers throughout southern Israel, including Beersheba, Ashkelon, Ashdod, and other towns.

Members of Israel’s high-tech elite will be participating. Science and Technology Minister Daniel Hershkowitz, Chief Scientist Avi Hasson, and top officials from companies like Microsoft, HP, Yahoo Labs, GE, Philips, and many others will be at one or another of the locations.

Science Night is sponsored by the Ministry of Science and Technology in conjunction with the European Union.