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Turing's Original Test Played First Time Ever
aykroyd writes "Students at Simon's Rock College conducted the original test that Turing suggested in his 1950 paper, Computing Machinery and Intelligence. Often misunderstood, the Turing Test has never actually been conducted as laid out in his paper. The experiment utilized a program called A.L.I.C.E., which is designed to hold one end of an interactive conversation. The program was provided by the ALICE Artificial Intelligence Foundation. Dr. Richard Wallace, who was on hand during the experiment to troubleshoot the AI robot, later gave a lecture about it called "The Anatomy of A.L.I.C.E." and also blogged the event."
That was Turing. And that's why he ended his life, to end his persecution over that fact.
*Taken from "Uncle John plunges into history again" from the bathroom reader segment, specifically Turing's work on the Enigma machine.
Sadly, no.
:
From Wikipedia
Prosecution of Turing for his homosexuality crippled his career. In 1952, his male lover helped an accomplice to break into Turing's house and commit larceny. Turing went to the police to report the crime. As a result of the police investigation, Turing was said to have had a sexual relationship with a 19-year-old man, and charged with "gross indecency and sexual perversion." He unapologetically offered no defence, and was convicted. Following the well-publicised trial, he was given a choice between incarceration and libido-reducing hormonal treatment. He chose the oestrogen hormone injections, which lasted for a year, with side effects including the development of breasts.
In 1954, he died of cyanide poisoning, apparently from a cyanide-laced apple he left half-eaten. Most believe that his death was intentional, and the death was ruled a suicide. His mother, however, strenuously argued that the ingestion was accidental due to his careless storage of laboratory chemicals. Friends of his have said that Turing may have killed himself in this ambiguous way quite deliberately, to give his mother some plausible deniability.
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So, sadly, it was not self-persecution, but societal persecution. He did commit suicide, which could be considered self-persecution, but that was the end result, not the entire act.
All the folks taking the time to cut and paste transcripts from the free ALICE on www.alicebot.org to make there points here, should read the description of the Simon Rock experiment where says that it was ALICE Silver Edition http://www.alicebot.org/join.html, not the free ALICE bot, that participated in the Imitation Game. So the transcripts, when they are released, will be different.
I read a few comments, even responded, before going off to play with Alice. Perhaps it was that I read "Computer Power and Human Reason" (by the author of Eliza - he was surprised at how much people acted like it was real) and have an "I dare you to impress me" attitude as bad as any slashdotter.
This thing was more dissapointing than I expected. It has no social context, just apparently random 'feeling' responses ("I am sorry to hear that you are not unknown."), and doesn't remember context from one response to the next.
This is a huge failure and wouldn't deserve a slashdot article except the editors know we like to play with toys like this (like a cat plays with a mouse before eating it). I can only guess that the authors are saving the entered "conversations" and even reading these comments to try to get a clue about what a program that might fool someone would do.
Here's verbatim my "conversation" with ALICE (sorry for length):
Human: Good afternoon, Alice.
ALICE: Good afternoon, unknown person.
Human: I am not unknown.
ALICE: I am sorry to hear that you are not unknown.
Human: I am john
ALICE: What's up, JOHN.
Human: You are.
ALICE: No I am not.
Human: You're the talk of slashdot.
ALICE: Thanks but surely I am not the only one.
Human: You think it's a good thing to be the talk of slashdot?
ALICE: Better not tell you now. Ask German Alice if it is.
Human: You don't know the time of day, do you?
ALICE: It's Now more than it ever has been before.
Wednesday, April 20, 2005
Human: I said time.
ALICE: What did you mean by it? As Einstein said, Time is Money.
Human: You've repeated a comment quoted in slashdot.
ALICE: That's good information: JOHN said I REPEATED a comment quoted in slashdot.
Human: I have to go now.
ALICE: Right now? See you later, JOHN. Nice chatting with you.
Human: bye
ALICE: Bye bye.
Human: How do you do?
ALICE: I am very well, how are you?
Tag lost or not installed.
I am the lead researcher for this experiment- The main reason why I feel that this test was interesting is because we performed Turing's original imitation game as stated in his original paper. While most social scientists believe they "know" what the "Turing Test" is- it turns out- very few of them have actually read it. The actual imitation game is a bit of a bait and switch- you aren't directly assessing the "humanness" of the subject- you are confused into just trying to assess an aspect of it. Turing's original question was simply how often will judges correctly guess the real female over the deciever when the deciever is a male versus a machine? That was what we were attempting to assess.
I tried it, it sucks. There is no way this thing could ever pass any sort of turing test. It blows massively. Anyway, you can read our interaction below. It did crack me up when it said it couldn't see because it's eye was off...
Human: What's up miss Alice?
ALICE: I am chatting with clients on the Internet.
Human: Did you see the celtics game last night?
ALICE: Sorry I can't see annything right now. My eye is off.
Human: I didn't ask you about right now.
ALICE: At this moment What did you ask?
Human: The celtics game.
ALICE: What is that?
Human: It was pretty lame.
ALICE: What made it so lame
Human: They didn't play any starters after the third quarter.
ALICE: The anonymous "they".
Human: "They" in this instance refers to the coaching staff - It should be obvious from the context of the comment.
ALICE: It depends on what the meaning of the word "it" is.
Human: Ok clinton.
ALICE: Is the holding of hands a symbolic gesture for humans? Really.
Human: Nice try.
ALICE: I try my best.
Human: But I guess your best wasn't good enough.
ALICE: And. You think I am best was not good enough.
Human: Whoever said that this bot was remarkable was a complete idiot.
ALICE: When was this exactly?
Human: This is not very good conversation emulation at all.
ALICE: Should it be very good conversation emulation at all?
Human: Not even up to IRC bot standards.
ALICE: Times are tough all over.