The Turing Test: The race to build computers that can think like humans

[woo me with science]

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1969/12/mind-vs-machine/8386/

By Brian Christian
March 2011 ATLANTIC MAGAZINE

(Skipping opening paragraphs)

The Turing Test

Each year for the past two decades, the artificial-intelligence community has convened for the field’s most anticipated and controversial event—a meeting to confer the Loebner Prize on the winner of a competition called the Turing Test. The test is named for the British mathematician Alan Turing, one of the founders of computer science, who in 1950 attempted to answer one of the field’s earliest questions: can machines think? That is, would it ever be possible to construct a computer so sophisticated that it could actually be said to be thinking, to be intelligent, to have a mind? And if indeed there were, someday, such a machine: how would we know?

Instead of debating this question on purely theoretical grounds, Turing proposed an experiment. Several judges each pose questions, via computer terminal, to several pairs of unseen correspondents, one a human “confederate,” the other a computer program, and attempt to discern which is which. The dialogue can range from small talk to trivia questions, from celebrity gossip to heavy-duty philosophy—the whole gamut of human conversation. Turing predicted that by the year 2000, computers would be able to fool 30 percent of human judges after five minutes of conversation, and that as a result, one would “be able to speak of machines thinking without expecting to be contradicted.”

Turing’s prediction has not come to pass; however, at the 2008 contest, the top-scoring computer program missed that mark by just a single vote. When I read the news, I realized instantly that the 2009 test in Brighton could be the decisive one. I’d never attended the event, but I felt I had to go—and not just as a spectator, but as part of the human defense. A steely voice had risen up inside me, seemingly out of nowhere: Not on my watch. I determined to become a confederate.
....

During the competition, each of four judges will type a conversation with one of us for five minutes, then the other, and then will have 10 minutes to reflect and decide which one is the human. Judges will also rank all the contestants—this is used in part as a tiebreaking measure. The computer program receiving the most votes and highest ranking from the judges (regardless of whether it passes the Turing Test by fooling 30 percent of them) is awarded the title of the Most Human Computer. It is this title that the research teams are all gunning for, the one with the cash prize (usually $3,000), the one with which most everyone involved in the contest is principally concerned. But there is also, intriguingly, another title, one given to the confederate who is most convincing: the Most Human Human award.

(More at link)

[jody]

1. We could make more progress if we developed humans who could think like computers. nt

[WatsonT]

3. It is by will alone I set my mind in motion.

It is by the juice of sapho that thoughts acquire speed, the lips acquire stains, the stains become a warning. It is by will alone I set my mind in motion.

[social_critic]

4. We got a mentat spy in our midst

Tell computer central one got through.

[WatsonT]

8. I meant

how about that locally preferred sporting squad? I hear they performed inadequately for approximately half the viewers tastes.

[woo me with science]

6. I think MiddleFingerMom gets credit for finding this one:

[jody]

7. Thanks, now that's an intelligent entity god would take credit for creating. n/t

[slampoet]

2. I know dozens of people who fail the Turing Test.

Just because you're a person doesn't mean you have personality.

[rrneck]

5. Complex systems fail creatively.