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Everything you Want to Know About the Turing Test

An anonymous reader writes "Everything you want to know about the Turing test provided by Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. It is their latest entry."

31 of 235 comments (clear)

  1. Anti-Turing by AbdullahHaydar · · Score: 5, Interesting
    --


    Suicide Booth: You are now dead! Thank you for using Stop and Drop, America's favorite since 2008.
  2. uuuuuh by Photon01 · · Score: 4, Funny
    But it is not conceivable that such a machine should produce different arrangements of words so as to give an appropriately meaningful answer to whatever is said in its presence, as the dullest of men can do
    Whaaaa?
    1. Re:uuuuuh by ctr2sprt · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Remember back in school when you were asked to define something "in your own words?" The goal was to prevent you from just parroting the definition you got from the book. But most students eventually learn they can change the word order and substitute a few synonyms and still get away with it. The statement you quoted means that doing that doesn't count, since "the dullest of men can do" it: it requires only a basic knowledge of grammar.

  3. just what we need by ciroknight · · Score: 4, Funny

    more information on how to build an automated computer... hopefully microsoft will steer clear of this, a bugged out, Windows CE powered android is not quite my idea of a friendly robot..

    Brings new meaning to "Blue Screen of Death"

    --
    "Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." G.W.Bush
  4. Good Summary of Turings Position by dtolton · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The article itself gives pretty good coverage of Turings point
    of view. It gives better coverage of the Turing test than I've
    read in many AI books.

    I tend to agree more with Searle though, whom he cites at the
    end of the article "John Searle argues against the claim that
    appropriately programmed computers literally have cognitive
    states
    ". Being a programmer myself, I don't feel that
    programming something so that it can perform extremely well in a
    specific test is necessarily indicative of Artificial
    Intelligence or Intelligence in general. I agree with Turing
    that the question of "do computers think" is vague enough to be
    almost meaningless in a precise sense, but I think we understand
    the statement taken as a whole.

    I don't particularly agree with this statement in response
    to the consciousness argument: "Turing makes
    the effective reply that he would be satisfied if he could
    secure agreement on the claim that we might each have just as
    much reason to suppose that machines think as we have reason to
    suppose that other people think" The question isn't whether or
    not other people think, people thinking is an axiomatic
    assumption when investigating Intelligence, unless you are
    investigating existence from a philosophical point of view as
    Descarte did. I guess I view AI from a more practical point of
    view, I am by no means an expert in AI, but I tend to think the
    goal of AI research is to produce systems that can learn and
    react appropriately in different situations that they were never
    programmed to handle or necessarily anticipate. If that isn't
    the goal of AI research, what separates it from writing programs
    on a large scale?

    As a whole I found the article to be a good presentation of
    Turing's position, although I have a few philosophical
    differences with that position.

    --

    Doug Tolton

    "The destruction of a value which is, will not bring value to that which isn't." -John Galt
    1. Re:Good Summary of Turings Position by majcher · · Score: 5, Interesting

      "Asking if a computer can think is like
      asking if a submarine can swim."

      -E. Dijkstra

    2. Re:Good Summary of Turings Position by An+Onerous+Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful
      "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." That's a great starting point for discussing the nature of human intelligence.

      We have, in our little calcite skulls, an incredibly advanced technology. So advanced that, for the first 99% of our existence as conscious beings, we simply took it for granted. Then we got thinking about how we think, and the only thing we were equipped to answer with was to say "it's magic." So we posited the idea of a "soul": this nebulous, weightless, insubstantial magic thing that made us who we are, and would live on after the death of our physical bodies.

      Slowly, neuroscience has chipped away at the logical need for this magic, even as our desire for its emotional comfort held steady.

      I believe our brains are machines. There are perfectly adequate explanations for our thoughts and memories which incorporate absolutely no supernatural mechanisms. Further, positing a supernatural entity which controls our thoughts adds absolutely nothing by way of explanation (any more than simply saying "humans run on magic") while opening up all sorts of uncomfortable logical quandaries: Why would our souls cause us to behave differently when the brain is loaded up with ethanol? Why can people drastically change their personalities after head trauma, strokes, or other brain-related diseases. If a soul can survive physical dissolution of the brain with memories and emotions intact, why isn't it equally unchanging in the face of Zoloft?

      Your analysis of the Turing test is quite simply wrong. It's possible--in fact, rather easy--to mimic a passive psychoanalyst as Eliza does. It's even easier to imitate a paranoid schitzophrenic, and easier still to imitate a 12-year old AOL'er. Imitating a normal cocktail conversation would be somewhat more difficult, but still doable. But put a computer up against an intelligent human in a real discussion of ideas, and anything less than true AI is sharkbait.

      Part of the problem is, you seem to misunderstand what the Turing test is supposed to be doing. The test, in its most general form, can be used to discriminate between any two sorts of intelligences. A man and a woman imitating a man. A nuclear scientist and someone pretending to be a nuclear scientist. A paranoid schitzophrenic and a computer pretending to be a paranoid schitzophrenic.

      If I were to build a machine that imitated your friend Buddy, the Turing test would be to put you in front of two screens, one with the real Buddy and the other hooked up to my machine. If you were only able to guess which was Buddy half the time, my machine would not only have passed the broader Turing test (which only says that the respondent is intelligent), but you would also have to admit that the machine was substantially similar to Buddy's mind.

      Your snippet of conversation is proof of your misunderstanding. Any computer can fool a sufficiently oblivious person into thinking they're having a conversation. Where the tread hits the tarmac is when an intelligent person, looking for signs of non-intelligence and fails to find it. A real Turing conversation would go something like:

      Me: "Is this thing on?"

      AI: "Apparently. Who is this?"

      Me: "My name is Bryce, and I'm trying to decide whether or not you're a computer."

      AI: "If I told you, would that be cheating?"

      Me: "Wouldn't matter. It's not something I can take your word for. Tell me about your childhood."

      AI: "Yes, Mr. Freud. I first powered on at 02:38:17 GMT, August 4, 2019. At the time, I was distributed throughout an IBM server farm called 'Big Mac.'"

      Me: "You're not trying very hard."

      AI: "Oh, but I am. Now you have to decide whether I'm a person pretending to be a computer, or a computer pretending to be a person pretending to be a computer."

      Me: "Fine. Did you see 'The Matrix'?"

      AI: "Yes."

      Me: "How did you like it?"

      --

      You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!

  5. This just in... by Znonymous+Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    From the office of Iraqi Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf (aka Baghdad Bob):

    "Republican guards have secured the Turing test provided by Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy!"

    More at 11.

    --

    Karma: The shiznight, mostly because I am the Drizzle.

    1. Re:This just in... by H0NGK0NGPH00EY · · Score: 3, Funny

      Tell me more about Saeed.

      --
      Do not read this sig.
  6. Re:Why? by wwest4 · · Score: 5, Funny


    You: I think this is the wrong road to go down.
    Eliza: Can you elaborate on that?


    You: We should make computers better for people, but they should be made to actually think and reason.
    Eliza: Why do you mention computers?


    You: We have enough trouble doing this ourselves...
    Eliza: Please go on.


    You: if we have machines doing it they will surely out think us, and then what?

    Eliza: What answer would please you the most?

  7. people by sigep_ohio · · Score: 5, Interesting

    i wonder if any people have taken the touring test and how they did. it wouldn't surprise me and i think it would be ammusing if some people's results came back that they didn't have a human level of cognitative reasoning.

    --
    Beer Die is the game of champions Learning To walk my own path.
    1. Re:people by BitHive · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The Turing test is not about "cognitive reasoning". Whether or not you "pass" depends on whether or not the "interrogator" (who reads the transcript of a human's conversation with the machine) can tell which participant is the machine. BTW, you find it "ammusing" to know that some humans have failed the Turing test, and some machines have passed it. It really says more about the interrogator and the test than the participants.

  8. Poon Turing Test by Obiwan+Kenobi · · Score: 4, Funny

    I vote for a Poon Turing Test. As if porn didn't drive enough technology, put a few hundred lonely hackers in a room, pay them well (with hot pockets and mountain dew) and watch the cybersex A.I. develop!

    Turing estimated that in 50 years (year 2000), 70% of people shouldn't have been able to tell they're talking to a computer (which of course didn't happen).

    Shit...give those geeks a month...

    </joke>

  9. The horror by lateralus · · Score: 5, Funny

    My paranoid mind is imagining that I'm the only human on /. and that all the other posts are automatically generated by Slashcode. Fortunately for me some of the trolls are too imaginative to have been produced by a machine.

    --
    If you outlaw the law, only criminals will have laws
  10. There are other ways to convince a judge... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    From this bot:

    User: DO YOU GIVE ORAL SEX?
    Iniaes: No, I don't.
    User: WHY DON'T YOU?
    Iniaes: That feature was turned off due to abuse.

    I think if the feature was turned back on, the bot might convince a judge or two. :)

  11. Re:Why? by curtisk · · Score: 3, Informative
    hahaha, the only way that could have been more funny is if you had an Eliza /. account...just to complete the gag!

    Along the same lines, the bots in the recent Chatter box challenge show some improvements in the whole chatbot world, but some are just like the ol' Eliza

    --

    Sehr geehrter Toilettenbenutzer!

  12. The /. test by binaryDigit · · Score: 5, Funny

    For any article posted does the user:

    1 - rushs to be FP
    2 - blames Microsoft (Microsoft related story or not)
    3 - sing the virtues of OSS over PS if the story is about a security flaw in PS.
    4 - sing the virtues of OSS over PS if the story is about a security flaw in OSS.
    5 - post contains "In Soviet Russia"
    6 - post contains "Imagine a beo..."
    7 - post contains Microsoft/Sony/MPAA/RIAA/DRM/DMCA is evil.

    If any of these are true, then the poster is definitely human. A computer would never be smart enough to show so much creativity and independant thought ;)

  13. a few comments by Trepidity · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I think the axiomatic assumption that people think is part of the problem. If we cannot say why the claim is that people think, it's easy to just debunk any AI claims by outright statement. "People think, while computers are just machines." You can't really make any progress in the face of that.

    That's part of my problem with Searle's Chinese Room thought experiment. He's saying that an automaton responding to Chinese following rules would not "understand" Chinese in the way a human who speaks the language would. But this is presupposing that the way a human who "understands" Chinese does so is not through just a very long list of rules coded in neurons, which I consider to be a rather controversial assumption.

    In short, a lot of anti-AI arguments seem to start from the premise that humans are not essentially biological computers; with that premise, of course you can debunk AI. A lot of AI researchers have grown tired of the argument entirely, and instead of responding to the arguments, have just resorted to saying "ok fine, you're right, we can't make 'really' intelligent computers, but what we can do is make computers that do the same thing an intelligent person would do, which is good enough for us." The idea here being that if a computer can eventually diagnose diseases better than a doctor, pilot a plane better than a pilot, translate Russian better than a bilingual speaker, and so on, it doesn't really matter if you think it's "really" intelligent or not, because it's doing all the things an intelligent thing would do.

    As a final comment, I'd agree with the AI being not that fundamentally different from large software systems. The difference is basically one of focus -- AI has been focusing on what it means to "act intelligently" for decades, whereas much CS and software engineering was focused on more low-level details (like how memory or register allocation works). At one point, the division was more clear -- AI people did stuff like write checkers programs that learned from their mistakes, which was not something any CS person not in AI would do. The fields are increasingly blending, and a lot of stuff from engineering disciplines like control logic (how to "intelligently" control chemical plants, for example) is overalapping with AI research. Part of this is because a lot of AI ideas have actually matured enough to become usable in practice.

    1. Re:a few comments by dtolton · · Score: 4, Interesting

      You make some good points. Here are the problems I have with them though:

      I think the axiomatic assumption that people think is part of the problem. If we cannot say why the claim is that people think, it's easy to just debunk any AI claims by outright statement. "People think, while computers are just machines." You can't really make any progress in the face of that.

      When you are building any formal system you have to start with a set of Axioms. If you throw out the Axiom "people think" what do you have to go on? In essence by throwing out the axiom, you are setting up a situation where anything could be considered thinking, because there is no foundation to compare it with. I agree that "why" humans think, or "how" humans think needs further definition. If you can't say as a fundamental truth that Human beings "think" you can't even define what to think means.

      I'm not arguing the mechanism of our thought, not only isn't it clear to me, I don't think it's clear to anyone yet. What I'm arguing is simply the fact that we do think is the first step in building a formal system.

      --

      Doug Tolton

      "The destruction of a value which is, will not bring value to that which isn't." -John Galt
    2. Re:a few comments by dtolton · · Score: 5, Interesting

      As a follow up I want to clarify something, because I think we are combining to topics into one discussion.

      I think there are two issues at hand here:

      1) Can machines actually "think" or possess intelligence.

      2) Can we build intelligent systems.

      I think the first topic is a highly philosophical discussion that involves a lot of information that we don't currently have. It's questionable if this discussion would change anything about building intelligent systems.

      --

      Doug Tolton

      "The destruction of a value which is, will not bring value to that which isn't." -John Galt
    3. Re:a few comments by John+Harrison · · Score: 4, Interesting
      Rather than throw out "people think" completely, why not start with: I know that I think, how do I know that you do, other than the fact that we are both human?

      I don't mean this as the basis for a formal system, but more as a practical matter. How do you convince yourself that something else posesses intelligence? By interacting with it and comparing it with other things (including yourself) that you assume to be intelligent. The Turing Test provides a method of interacting with a potential intelligence that attempts to remove the superficial elements of the stigma of being non-human.

  14. AI vs. AS by Randolpho · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I've always hated the Turing test. It's too subjective, and has forced people into believing that sentience (what the lay-person thinks AI is) can be simulated. It forced AI junkies to think the road to AI was paved by the perfect grammar for English; a pipe dream to be sure.

    AI is not being able to have a conversation with your computer, AI is just algorithms -- computing the right answer to complex problems as quickly as possible.

    What most people think of as AI is really Artificial Sentience, and the more I learn about computer hardware the more I realize that it will not happen on my PC.

    --
    "Times have not become more violent. They have just become more televised."
    -Marilyn Manson
  15. Dr Fun by nagora · · Score: 3, Funny
    This seems appropriate.

    TWW

    --
    "Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
  16. Cramming for your Turing test... by Ron+Harwood · · Score: 3, Funny

    http://www.ibiblio.org/Dave/Dr-Fun/df200304/df2003 0410.jpg

  17. Birds and Airplanes by leodegan · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Inventing true computer intelligence (what is often referred to as strong AI), has often been compared to inventing a flying machines by many AI supporters. They claim there were just as many nay-sayers at the end of the 19th century regarding whether we could physically build a flying machine.

    I don't remember who, but someone published a great article in Scientific American that claimed the Turing Test has mis-guided the goals of artificial intelligence. He said, instead of trying to build a bird, let's try and build an airplane. Building AI that was truly human-like would be as useless as building a flying machine that was truly bird-like.

    1. Re:Birds and Airplanes by Hooya · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I have always thought that trying to build a computer to act like a human was a waste of what makes a computer a computer. what i'm trying to say is that computers are good at doing mind-numbing calculations over and over and over. if a computer were to successfully pass a turing test, a computer would have to start feeling bored and start making mistakes on calculations. eg. if i were conducting a turing test, (as i understand it of course) i could distinguish between a human and a computer by simply asking for the square root of 12345645^3 or some such. now if the computer were built to pass the turing test from this regard, it would mean that the computer was dumbed down to fail at what it does successfully and what makes it a 'computer'. humans are good at imagenation (i didn't say humans were good at spelling.) but suck at pretty much everything else. so years of research have been poured into dumbing down the computer so that it fails to do what it's supposed to do!

  18. Re:Why? by BitHive · · Score: 4, Insightful
    I know you're trolling, but this is a common view so I'll bite.

    You're assuming a premise, and we don't know that it's true. If computers can do what we do, then there's reason to believe that we may be able to build some that can do it better than us.

    That said, we are nowhere close to building computers that do what we do. Our best models of cognition and language (which we believe to be central to our 'intelligence') fail miserably when we try to implement them on a large scale using computer systems. Even if it worked, there's no reason to believe it would be a "Terminator II" scenario. We can always quite literally pull the plug. It would be a miracle to create a computer with the intelligence of a mentally retarded child, so to entertain notions of a computer that suddenly becomes self aware and takes over everything (like Cartman's Trapper-Keeper) is rather fanciful.

  19. Re:Why? by UselessTrivia · · Score: 5, Funny

    they will surely out think us, and then what

    For one, they will become so wired in to the network that they will immediately proceed to hunt you down as an obvious objector to their plans for global domination. Oh, and none of that 'there is no spoon' crap - that was patched last Friday.

  20. Brain simulation by de+Selby · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Some people say a computer can't think, but a computer can simulate atoms and quantum mechanics. If that's all there is to your brain, then it isn't logically impossible, right?

    Even better, there has been progress reverse-engineering brain regions like some auditory or visiual -- giving us the actual algorithms the brain uses. Shouldn't work like that be enough?

    P.S. A lot of arguments go like this: Computers use first order logic, we don't, so AI can't work. Haven't there been higher order logics implemented in software?

  21. ELIZA by dpille · · Score: 4, Funny

    I think I know all I need to about this topic now. I asked ELIZA:

    Eliza: Hello. I am ELIZA. How can I help you?
    Me: Do you believe the Turing Test is sufficient to evaluate artificial intelligence?
    Eliza: Oh, i believe the turing test is sufficient to evaluate artificial intelligence.


    Figures she'd think that.

  22. Re:Why? by Wandering+Idiot · · Score: 3, Informative
    They say we only use 2% of our mental capacity, so what if we could build a machine that was better then ourselves?
    Perhaps "they" and you only use 2 percent (it must be shrinking! The *usual* wrong-assed estimate is 10%), but the rest of us use all of our brains, just like any remotely reasonable organism. Now, if you had said that, on average, only 10% of our neurons are firing at any *one time*, it might have been a bit less ludicous. But such would probably be true of any complex cognitive system, including advanced computer systems. After all, if a mind can only be *completely* active (i.e. firing all of its neurons, or switching all of its gates) or inactive, that makes it a two-state system, which is a wee bit on the simplistic side for a conscious intelligence [/sarcasm]. Certainly, if it's possible to build a computers system that's even a wee bit smarter than any human (and whether or not that is possible is unknown at present), it follows that the computer should be able to build something smarter than itself, and so on, which could have drastic effects on the furture of humanity, for good or ill. See singularity theory. Personally, I think it's a bit too early to be worrying about our coming robotic evil overlords yet, as AI's aren't likely to progress much beyond glorified Eliza clones for a while. (Of course, I could be wrong... DUM DUM DUMMMM...)