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How I Failed the Turing Test

chrisjrn writes "I stubled across this article today, detailing a man's experiences of being added to AIM Screen Name lists - one full of "celebrities" and the other full of "Sex Bots" (he was, of course, neither of these). Raises a few questions as to how easy it is to get a hold of your screenname, and also of the effectiveness of the Turing Test for AI, in the online world. Or is it just that people aren't bothered trying to tell the humans apart anymore?" Also, it's funny. Don't try to read anything deep into it.

326 comments

  1. It's not that he failed the Turing test... by It+doesn't+come+easy · · Score: 5, Funny

    It's that the dialog of a typical IM user can't be distinguished from a brain-dead conversation bot...

    --
    The NSA: The only part of the US government that actually listens.
    1. Re:It's not that he failed the Turing test... by domipheus · · Score: 5, Funny

      You're the dialog of a typical IM user can't be distinguished from a brain-dead conversation bot?

    2. Re:It's not that he failed the Turing test... by rayde · · Score: 5, Insightful
      well his dialogue in particular... for example, in this section:

      shymuffin32: why do you like music?
      jmstriegel: hmm. i've never really considered that.
      jmstriegel: hell, i'm not going to be able to contrive a good answer for that one. ask me something else.

      he doesn't give a response that proves he even recognizes the question, instead, he gives a brain-dead answer that could be put into any number of questions.

      just like, try harder next time dude

    3. Re:It's not that he failed the Turing test... by SimilarityEngine · · Score: 1

      I think by this point he was just fed up with trying to prove his fleshiness to his inquisitors.

      --
      Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
    4. Re:It's not that he failed the Turing test... by TripMaster+Monkey · · Score: 1


      OK...why do you like music?

      --
      ____

      ~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey

    5. Re:It's not that he failed the Turing test... by mjdth · · Score: 1
    6. Re:It's not that he failed the Turing test... by vitamine73 · · Score: 2, Funny

      > Hello, I am Eliza.
      * ooh eliza... I missed you
      > Oh... ?

    7. Re:It's not that he failed the Turing test... by NoTheory · · Score: 1

      I don't think its a question of giving a good answer, its how one deflects the question to an inadequate answer.

      i probably would have said "well that's a complicated question. w/ the music i listen to, i'm all about intricate beat patterns, or interesting melodic lines (or both preferably). If you want an explanation of why humans enjoy music, that's a different issue."

      --
      There are lives at stake here!
    8. Re:It's not that he failed the Turing test... by Captain+Splendid · · Score: 1

      Well, I don't know about the grandparent, but it makes my hips wiggle and my legs shake!

      --
      Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
    9. Re:It's not that he failed the Turing test... by SimilarityEngine · · Score: 1

      i probably would have said "well that's a complicated question. w/ the music i listen to, i'm all about intricate beat patterns, or interesting melodic lines (or both preferably). If you want an explanation of why humans enjoy music, that's a different issue."

      That honestly would be your reply to "do you like music"? Bear in mind this question was not asked in the context of a properly set up Turing test - it was basically just some IM chit-chat, which has been "reinterpreted" as having something vaguely to do with Turing tests, after the fact.

      --
      Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
    10. Re:It's not that he failed the Turing test... by NoTheory · · Score: 4, Insightful

      yeah... see, i used to hangout in the customization/skinning community, and cause of that you learn to deal w/ a lot of clueless 14 year olds. If you give them a complex enough answer (although i tend to stick with ones that also happen to be what i believe), you quickly weed out the 14 year olds who have brains, and the ones who don't. The ones who've a clue ask follow up questions and respond like they've thought about what you've said, and the ones who don't respond with "LoL" and then change the subject to something inane.

      Anyway, long story short. You want someone to stop asking you frivolous questions? Give them answers.

      --
      There are lives at stake here!
    11. Re:It's not that he failed the Turing test... by Thud457 · · Score: 3, Funny

      I don't like music.
      I just like stealing things.

      --

      the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff

    12. Re:It's not that he failed the Turing test... by SimilarityEngine · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Fair enough then ;^) - btw I personally prefer a rich harmonic structure, with interesting modulation.

      --
      Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
    13. Re:It's not that he failed the Turing test... by 21st+Century+Peon · · Score: 1

      If you want an explanation of why humans enjoy music, that's a different issue.

      You admit to differentiating between yourself and humans?
      You are a bot, and I claim my five pounds.

      --
      "Knowledge, sir, should be free to all!"
      ~Harcourt Fenton Mudd
    14. Re:It's not that he failed the Turing test... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      LoL

    15. Re:It's not that he failed the Turing test... by ErroneousBee · · Score: 4, Funny

      When I run Nat King Cole through my music appreciation circuits, they return true values.

      --
      **TODO** Steal someone elses sig.
    16. Re:It's not that he failed the Turing test... by Jack9 · · Score: 1

      Most any answer that will distinguish a human from a machine starts with "I assume" or with actual attempts at introspection that entail metaphors. Both assumptions and metaphors, bots are notoriously bad at identifying with, and replicating in casual conversation.

      My response would be:

      Jack9: I don't rightly know, but I assume it's a genetic predisposition to certain melodies and beats. I may be aberrant when I say I particularly enjoy deep rough guitar rifts. Kidney Thieves, Radiohead, Placebo, etc.

      Of course this guy seems as brain dead as any other casual AIM user, which is part of the problem.

      --

      Often wrong but never in doubt.
      I am Jack9.
      Everyone knows me.
    17. Re:It's not that he failed the Turing test... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      1: "Only the Sith deal in absolutes."
      2: "Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists."
      Hmm..

      So, is it the Sith that are endorsed by Bush, or is it Bush who is endorsed by the Sith?
      Or is Bush just an evil Sithlord, just like your average Sithlord?

    18. Re:It's not that he failed the Turing test... by bcattwoo · · Score: 2, Funny

      It helps drown out those pesky voices in my head.

    19. Re:It's not that he failed the Turing test... by Keith+Gabryelski · · Score: 5, Funny

      I live in Boston, MA but was in in Fort Lauderdale, FL a couple of months ago and thought it would be nice to see what Zagat's Guide had to say about the restaurants. I openned up the danger device and added "Zagat" and "Zagats" to my instant messenger buddy list, and immediately I saw "zagats" online. Very cool.

      The conversation went something like this:

          Keith M Gabryelski: fort lauderdale, fl

      [... moments pass ...]

          Zagats: ?
          Keith M Gabryelski: sushi
          Zagats: what do you want?
          Keith M Gabryelski: Well, missed opportunity me thinks. Have you never heard of Zagat's guide?

      At this point it is obvious to me my relationship with zagats will not be going much further. I receive no reply and set my sights on trying to navigate the zagat website from my danger device.

      A few days later, at lunch I notice "zagats" online again. I thought: hmmmm... let's play:

          Keith M Gabryelski: recommend thai boston, ma

      [... no response ...]

      About three minutes later:

          Ginaleena03: why are you im'ing my friend... shes not the zagats guidebook, shes a law student
          Keith M Gabryelski: Ok, then can u suggest a good thai place in boston?
          Keith M Gabryelski: Somewhere around the theatre district
          Keith M Gabryelski: That's ok if you have to think about... Get back to me later please

      [... time passes ...]

          Ginaleena03: no ... god! ... go on citysearch or something; we dont care where you dine
          Ginaleena03: we're not earning commissions over here
          Keith M Gabryelski: Ok. Well... I have a review for the zagat guide. Can I forward it to you and can you get it to them?

      [... at this point ginaleena03 and zagats both log off; I suspect I have been blocked ...]

      If anyone knows of a restaurant guide on AIM could you please forward the screenname? I suspect both of these are real people.

      Pax, Keith

      Ps, Yes... this actually happened

      PPs, Yes... I am an as*hole

    20. Re:It's not that he failed the Turing test... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      >That honestly would be your reply to "do you like music"?

      Note that the question is "why do you like music". You've simplified it dramatically and then complained his answer was complex.

    21. Re:It's not that he failed the Turing test... by kilodelta · · Score: 2, Interesting

      First off, anyone who doesn't know how to change the AIM settings to say "Only allow people on my buddy list to add me to their buddy list." shouldn't be allowed to use AIM.

      But his experiences are amusing. I would have played with it a bit more. Make the idiot invest that much more time to ultimately find out you're not some commonly known celebrity but the Ruler of the Universe instead.

      I recall when the ALICE IRC bot was first getting rolled out. Everyone was so amazed and then I popped the question: "Who is your creator?"

      The bot then proceeded to tell me about Dr. so and so and his I.T. lab, etc. This was until the woman who was selling the bots to people discovered that I'd figured out how to get the bot to expose itself so to speak, and they changed the creator response to their own name.

      Nice try but I know a bot when I see one.

    22. Re:It's not that he failed the Turing test... by lonesome+phreak · · Score: 1

      All three unfortunatly. Just be watchfull when the Presidential Guard start wearing red robes...

      --
      Maybe we DID take the blue pill. You wouldn't remember anyway.
    23. Re:It's not that he failed the Turing test... by recursiv · · Score: 1

      Its ability to evoke emotion through sound. It's almost magic.

      --
      I used to bulls-eye womp-rats in my pants
    24. Re:It's not that he failed the Turing test... by ebyrob · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Ya, but one response like that doesn't fail a turing test, keep asking questions over and over and see if the pattern repeats... Sheesh.

      He at least got the context right, and gave an original answer, that's a bare minimum human response. The human shouldn't have to "try" to seem human. (Of course, they also shouldn't be trying to seem less than human or the test is unfair in the other direciton)

      Maybe those trying to "administer" Turing tests need to learn to have a bit more of an attention span...

      Of course, if the pattern repeats and this happens after an extended conversation, this guy probably just isn't a very good listener.

    25. Re:It's not that he failed the Turing test... by ebyrob · · Score: 1

      Who said I like music? You insensitive clod!

    26. Re:It's not that he failed the Turing test... by m50d · · Score: 1

      Is it because of your mother that you can't distinguish the dialog of a typical IM user from a brain-dead conversation bot?

      --
      I am trolling
    27. Re:It's not that he failed the Turing test... by Atzanteol · · Score: 1

      Hrm... I wonder how they will react now with several slashdotters asking for restaurant information.

      Oh, and there's some good Thai in Cambridge (Elephant walk). :-)

      --
      "Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge"

      - Charles Darwin
    28. Re:It's not that he failed the Turing test... by Geekboy(Wizard) · · Score: 1

      because bacon causes astigmatism

    29. Re:It's not that he failed the Turing test... by fatcatman · · Score: 2, Interesting

      OK; I was dating this girl back in '92 or so. She used to call my BBS and chat with me, which was cool, I suppose. One day, however, I wasn't there, and she got my Eliza-clone chatbot (it would auto answer and play sysop if I didn't answer a chat request within x seconds).

      I came home hours later and found the log. She started out all sweet, but slowly became more and more irritated with "my" responses. Finally culminating in questions like, "Don't you love me?" and "Why are you treating me like this?". Of course, the bot gave dumb responses that pissed her off even more, and she broke up with me, right there. Told "me" never to call her again.

      And you know what? I didn't. I figured if she was that stupid, I was better off without her.

    30. Re:It's not that he failed the Turing test... by Hurricane78 · · Score: 1

      > 1: "Only the Sith deal in absolutes."
      > 2: "Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists."
      > Hmm...

      You forgot:
      3: War!
      4: Profit!!!

      --
      Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
    31. Re:It's not that he failed the Turing test... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Turing is useless. If they were any good, Neuromancer wouldn't have broken free.

    32. Re:It's not that he failed the Turing test... by Quixote · · Score: 1
      Interesting. You, my friend, have invented the "smart girlfriend test" (heretofore known as the "fatcatman test").

      (runs off to try it on his gf..)

    33. Re:It's not that he failed the Turing test... by Negatyfus · · Score: 1

      My quickly hacked together, useless, buggy Eliza addon for World of Warcraft:

      http://www.curse-gaming.com/mod.php?addid=1881 :)

  2. Sex bots by Zlib+pt · · Score: 3, Funny

    Funny are does who go and talk to a sex bot and say "are you sure your a bot" ?

    1. Re:Sex bots by Apiakun · · Score: 4, Funny

      What?

    2. Re:Sex bots by duplo · · Score: 0

      Does what interest you ?

    3. Re:Sex bots by mwvdlee · · Score: 4, Funny

      You know, "Do, a Deer, a Female Deer" (from The Sound Of Music).
      But many of them... a number of Does.
      I guess that would be funny then ;)

      --
      Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
    4. Re:Sex bots by SimilarityEngine · · Score: 1

      /me spits coffee over keyboard

      --
      Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
    5. Re:Sex bots by Jonny_eh · · Score: 1

      Sex bots use better grammar than you!

    6. Re:Sex bots by OakDragon · · Score: 3, Funny

      You know, if you ask them if they're a sex bot, and they are, they HAVE to tell you!

  3. ... and went on to boast about it! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    There is nothing new or newsworthy about stupid people, CmdrTaco. The world is full of utter morons!

    1. Re:... and went on to boast about it! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

      There is nothing new or newsworthy about stupid people, CmdrTaco.

      No need to repeat yourself.

  4. Another AI test by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I'll believe in AI when a robot can tie shoelaces. Mimicking conversation is nice and well, but as far as robotics goes, we've yet to see anything remotely resembling artificial intelligence in action.

    1. Re:Another AI test by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

      Does this count?

    2. Re:Another AI test by ozmanjusri · · Score: 5, Funny

      I'll believe in AI when a robot can tie shoelaces.

      The most convincing AIs I've seen are the bots in FPS games. And they're already programmed to hunt down and kill humans...

      --
      "I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
    3. Re:Another AI test by vertinox · · Score: 1

      I'll believe in AI when a robot can tie shoelaces.

      And put my servants out a job!?

      No thank you. I'll take a human to tie my shoes any day of the week over a heartless machine. The nerve!

      --
      "I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
      -Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
    4. Re:Another AI test by n54 · · Score: 4, Funny

      I'll believe in real AI when the robot tying your shoelaces ties them together to trip you :)

      --
      this comment is provided "as is" and without any express or implied legibility or congruity [...]
    5. Re:Another AI test by JabberWokky · · Score: 2, Interesting
      Both you and the grandparent are making the (common nowadays) mistake that the field of artificial intelligence is seeking to create any sort of sentient or even lifelike behavior. Sure, there's a bit of "emulating humans" in the field, but quite a bit of it is self regulating complex feedback systems wherein you feed a minimum of parameters and the system learns to balance input to output. AI as a scientific field has more to do with good thermostats that cool you down without a blast of cold air in the face and how many size 32 jeans to ship to the Tampa, Florida store in three months than a talking walking Robbie the Robot.

      Real AI is here and working fine. Drive a nice car and flip on the AC or walk into a megamart and look at the shelves to see the results.

      --
      Evan

      --
      "$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
    6. Re:Another AI test by EvilTwinSkippy · · Score: 1
      WOPR: Would you like to play a game?
      David: How about Global Thermonuclear War?
      WOPR: Wouldn't you prefer a good game of chess?

      (Strange Game...the only way to win is not to play.)

      --
      "Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
      --Dr.W.Edwards Deming
    7. Re:Another AI test by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      as far as robotics goes, we've yet to see anything remotely resembling artificial intelligence in action.

      Er, of course we haven't. Robotics is the construction of something physical. Artificial intelligence is the construction of a mind. They are two completely different things.

      As for "believing in" AI, what's to believe in? The definition gets pushed back a little further every time something new is accomplished. Twenty years ago, you might have said "I'll believe in AI when a computer can beat a grandmaster at chess". Twenty years in the future, you'll probably consider a robot that can tie shoelaces to be trivial and consider something else worthwhile evidence of AI.

    8. Re:Another AI test by leonardluen · · Score: 1, Insightful

      but why does a robot need to wear shoes?

    9. Re:Another AI test by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

      I'm a heartless machine, you insensitive clod!

      -The SlashDot Joke Posting Script

    10. Re:Another AI test by n54 · · Score: 1

      Are you saying AI to you means nothing more than a few nested loopback feeds or cascading decisions? (Nope I doubt you actually think so).

      Bah I wont care to get dragged into any debate on definitions -- my post was a joke with a kernel of truth in it and I think everybody got it even if "AI" is a misnomer (which it always is afaiac).

      --
      this comment is provided "as is" and without any express or implied legibility or congruity [...]
    11. Re:Another AI test by shokk · · Score: 1

      I would hope an AI wouldn't bother with something as medieval as laces.

      --
      "Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart, he dreams himself your master."
    12. Re:Another AI test by JabberWokky · · Score: 1
      I meant to pop a disclaimer in there that I knew you probably meant it as a joke - yours happened to be the post I tagged with my comment that applied more to the general conversation here. I even had a nice wording that tied it into the original poster's comment that it was a joke.

      --
      Evan

      --
      "$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
    13. Re:Another AI test by soft_guy · · Score: 2, Insightful

      You mean AI researchers are to blame when its a hot day and the A/C in my new car doesn't blast me in the face with cool air?

      --
      Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
    14. Re:Another AI test by soft_guy · · Score: 1

      Take your pick:

      To keep it's feet warm. Duh!

      No shoes/no shirt/no service. Duh!

      --
      Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
    15. Re:Another AI test by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No doubt. An proper AI would recognize that a "lace" will wear out too quickly and go ahead and rivet those reeboks directly to your foot.

    16. Re:Another AI test by JHromadka · · Score: 1

      Um, Chess is won very easily. I think you are referring to Tic-Tac-Toe, which was the game they played in that movie.

      --
      "The objective of securing the safety of Americans from crime and terror has been achieved." -- John Ashcroft
    17. Re:Another AI test by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

      zzz ... Hey baby want to kill all humans? zzz

    18. Re:Another AI test by rayde · · Score: 2, Insightful
      don't say that too loud. I don't want bot engines to become categorized as weapons of mass destruction. i can see a day where these AI's are covered in export restrictions because of their increasing complexity and capabilities.

      game over man, game over

    19. Re:Another AI test by rjstegbauer · · Score: 1

      I'll believe in AI when a robot can teach a 5 year old child to tie shoelaces!! That's a much harder problem. -- Randy - Father of four

    20. Re:Another AI test by coolGuyZak · · Score: 2, Funny

      I'll believe in real AI when a military robot gets struck by lightning and subsequently malfunctions. It would enjoy the 3 stooges, reprogram itself and it's military bretheren. It could take apart a car in under 3 seconds & steal the nova trucks. Eventually, it would have to convince it's creator that it is, in fact, alive.

    21. Re:Another AI test by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The computer was taught to "think" with chess. I can't remember if joshua offered chess instead
      of gtw in the begining of the movie. It defineately offered chess at the end. interesting movie, joshua's "codebreaking" bothered me along with a few other things; but I liked it.

    22. Re:Another AI test by Masami+Eiri · · Score: 1

      That's the exact quote. The WOPR suggested Chess instead of Thermonuclear War.

    23. Re:Another AI test by kernelfoobar · · Score: 1

      the A/C in my new car doesn't blast me in the face with cool air?

      Don't Anonymous Cowards usually blast hot air in people's face? And you get slashdot in your car? cool.

      --
      Here we go again!
    24. Re:Another AI test by soft_guy · · Score: 1

      And you get slashdot in your car? cool.

      Sure. I just use this hack.

      --
      Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
    25. Re:Another AI test by EvilTwinSkippy · · Score: 1
      The computer was taught to "think" with chess. I can't remember if joshua offered chess instead of gtw in the begining of the movie. It defineately offered chess at the end. interesting movie, joshua's "codebreaking" bothered me along with a few other things; but I liked it.

      One thing the movie had going for it was the fact the computers were still very much science fiction back in 1982. People had seen them, but they really didn't understand yet what they could and could not do. This was still the day of blue boxes and 300k modems. You also had the real worry of nuclear war breaking out at any time.

      Virtually nothing in the movie would be believable if it was set in the modern day. That said, I think an outfit is planning a direct to DVD release which is going to be a Remake or Sequel or Something along those lines, with Joshua hanging out on message boards an pretending to be a human when David stumbles across it. (I only know because some of the shooting is planned for my hometown, Philly, PA)

      --
      "Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
      --Dr.W.Edwards Deming
    26. Re:Another AI test by Ed_Pinkley · · Score: 1

      That's a great point. Another variation would be:

      I'll belieive in AI when a robot can figure out how to tie shoelaces without being taught.

      --
      "Long time listener, first time caller."
    27. Re:Another AI test by MegaFur · · Score: 1

      Hey man, that might not be that funny.

      Luckily, I'm pretty sure they still require waypoints to get anywhere in the map, so we're probably still safe .. Unless they airdrop the robot drone killer right next to you, in which run outside of the robot's Field of View.

      --
      Furry cows moo and decompress.
    28. Re:Another AI test by n54 · · Score: 1

      No worries - I overreacted since I myself don't really like the way the "word" AI is used (I even don't think any real high-level intelligence can be called artificial, synthetic perhaps but not artificial :) which of course at least opens up yet another can of worms lol).

      --
      this comment is provided "as is" and without any express or implied legibility or congruity [...]
    29. Re:Another AI test by n54 · · Score: 1

      Or maybe, just maybe, we humans will have to do our best to convince it that we are in fact alive and intelligent :)

      --
      this comment is provided "as is" and without any express or implied legibility or congruity [...]
    30. Re:Another AI test by MrScience · · Score: 1
      Well, scientists have developed the software for it...
      This model reveals that there are several other "reasonable" ways of lacing shoes. Of these, the bow-tie method is the most efficient in terms of requiring the shortest lace yet using all the eyelets. However, the two traditional "dense" styles win when you're looking for the strongest lacing--that is, the one that gives the maximum tension on both sides of the shoe. Which of the two is stronger depends on the distance between the two rows of eyelets: zigzag when the eyelets are close together and straight when they are farther apart.
      Hundreds of years of trial and error have led to the strongest--if not the most efficient--way of lacing our shoes, Polster concluded. That's in the face of a staggering 51,840 possible lacings for a shoe with just five eyelets on each side."
      --

      You quitting proves that the karma kap worked. The most annoying of the whores shut up. --CmdrTaco

    31. Re:Another AI test by toddestan · · Score: 1

      The most convincing AIs I've seen are the bots in FPS games. And they're already programmed to hunt down and kill humans...

      Actually, the most convincing bots I have come accross are the posters at slashdot. Sometimes I find it really hard to believe that I'm the only human here.

    32. Re:Another AI test by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      ow many size 32 jeans to ship to the Tampa, Florida store in three months...

      That's easy... NONE! Only fat people live in Florida!
      Oh wait, maybe I'm thinking of Minnesota.

    33. Re:Another AI test by AvitarX · · Score: 1

      Maybe they can tie them already.

      I know I learned to tie my shoes, but hated doing it (this was over a summer). When I got to school I saw other children getting their shoes tied by the teachers I quickly "forgot" how to tie my shoes.

      PS. I am lazier now than then.

      --
      Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
    34. Re:Another AI test by rjstegbauer · · Score: 1

      AHH! That's IT! Computers (or robots) will be intelligent...when they learn to be LAZY! What's more human that THAT?

  5. Absolutely dead link by Saiyine · · Score: 0, Redundant


    Maybe the coral could help.

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    Kunowalls!!! Random sexy wallpapers (NSFW!).

    --
    Hosting 20G hd, 1Tb bw! ssh $7.95
    1. Re:Absolutely dead link by jebell · · Score: 1

      Nope, that's dead to me as well.

      --
      This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is mine.
    2. Re:Absolutely dead link by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I hate to say it, but that's dead too! Go ahead and mirrordot it instead: http://www.mirrordot.org/stories/aefa63252566225fe c0f52b671fcbdae/index.html

    3. Re:Absolutely dead link by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Even better is the coral cache of the mirrordot.

    4. Re:Absolutely dead link by R_Growler · · Score: 1
    5. Re:Absolutely dead link by Saiyine · · Score: 1


      Sorry, sorry, sorry, my fault, wrong link.

      Maybe the coral [com.nyud.nu] could help. This is the correct one. But it doesn't work, either. Maybe the Mirrordot one's...

      --
      Superb hosting [dreamhost.com] 4800MB Storage, 120GB bandwidth, $7,95.
      Kunowalls!!! [kunowalls.host.sk] Random sexy wallpapers (NSFW!).

      --
      Hosting 20G hd, 1Tb bw! ssh $7.95
    6. Re:Absolutely dead link by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      --
      Superb hosting 4800MB Storage, 120GB bandwidth, $7,95.
      Kunowalls!!! Random sexy wallpapers (NSFW!).,

      That is not a signature. I know becasue I have turned them off. You are inserting this line on each of your messages. Fuck you, spammer!

  6. captain stuble by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny



    stuble, v. To edit with indifference.

    1. Re:captain stuble by kayumi · · Score: 0

      see also

      sledit, v. To careLesly stuble.

  7. Bots have interesting qualities by DJ+Marvin · · Score: 5, Funny

    Well, this article shows that at last we came to the point where a bot is comparable to a human being at a chat room. In fact, we didn't get to this point with better AI, but with worse RI (real intelligence, if the term applies to this case).

    Ladies and Gentleman: a completely insensitive and unintelligen bot can be more interesting to chat with than a human! Well, at least they write correctly (N07 L@M3 @SS).

    1. Re:Bots have interesting qualities by EvilTwinSkippy · · Score: 1

      And the bots don't start flame wars, aren't generally malicious, and if they try to be mean the results are usually comical.

      --
      "Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
      --Dr.W.Edwards Deming
    2. Re:Bots have interesting qualities by Iriel · · Score: 2

      I just couldn't bring myself to mod this as funny in all honesty. It's quite depressing when I've seen IM-isms seeping into normal writing and speech. It's quite depressing when I've heard people creating pronounciations for IM acronyms (instead of just saying the damn phrase) and kids in school getting lower grades for writing the IM acronyms in their papers.

      Parent Post == Startling Public Service Announcement

      --
      Perfecting Discordia
      www.stevenvansickle.com
    3. Re:Bots have interesting qualities by cp.tar · · Score: 1
      I recall having an AI program installed, but I can't recall its name...it should be in the Debian repository somewhere, but it's nowhere to be found in Gentoo...

      Anyway, I showed it to a friend once. We sat down and talked to it, and when it started spitting our sentences back at us, we started swearing and insulting.

      It took us about 15-20 minutes to bring it to the IQ level of a common Usenet troll... if I still had the program, I'd be using it to generate replies to morons.

      --
      Ignore this signature. By order.
    4. Re:Bots have interesting qualities by FurryFeet · · Score: 1

      Someone actually told me "LOL" out loud. Instead of laughing. I felt like following up with a "/me kills idiot", but I didn't have my gun with me.

    5. Re:Bots have interesting qualities by Baloo+Ursidae · · Score: 1
      Someone actually told me "LOL" out loud. Instead of laughing. I felt like following up with a "/me kills idiot", but I didn't have my gun with me.

      These people are just asking to be tied to a chair and be forced to live in a society made entirely of AOL chat rooms until they die. They infest conventions of all types, too. If you go AOL on us, constaff should be able to throw your ass back home....

      --
      Help us build a better map!
  8. Is that a record.... by MrBandersnatch · · Score: 0
    for slashdotting a site? 2 of 4 comments and it was gone....*sigh*

    Seriously though, for a site that has poored thousands of hours into developing its backend, how difficult would it be to ensure that the link is always cached before posting it?

    1. Re:Is that a record.... by LnxAddct · · Score: 1

      It is. Mirrordot.org always caches the links, although they are not a part of OSDN.
      Regards,
      Steve

    2. Re:Is that a record.... by mwvdlee · · Score: 1

      But that would cost an entire line of RegEx-based search and replace on every article published.

      Think of the code bloat!
      Think of the massive performance!
      Think of the children!!!

      Seriously though; any cache system, including the fine "Coral" would probably fail under Slashdot load, besides making enemies if you did that on every single article.

      --
      Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
    3. Re:Is that a record.... by AndyFewt · · Score: 1

      Nope, we've managed to take down sites with just the slashdot subscribers only. So before any comments have been posted.

    4. Re:Is that a record.... by MadChicken · · Score: 1

      Nope, many thousands of hackaday and digg readers got to this site 2 days before slashdot.

      --
      SYS 64738 NO CARRIER
    5. Re:Is that a record.... by silverburn · · Score: 2, Funny

      Hell, I poured thousands of hours into my backend, and now check out my buns of steel!

    6. Re:Is that a record.... by coolGuyZak · · Score: 1

      Really? I poured them into the frontend, and now run Big Iron.

  9. humor by domipheus · · Score: 4, Insightful

    whoever modded me Flamebait obviously has no sence of humor :)

    maybe I was aiming a little high with that one...

    1. Re:humor by Punkrokkr · · Score: 2, Funny

      Reminds me of the "psychoanalyst" game that comes with XEmacs. Unfortunately I didn't get it until your reply to being modded as flamebait.

      --

      There's no emoticon for what I'm feeling! -- CBG, "The Computer Wore Menace Shoes"
    2. Re:humor by falcon5768 · · Score: 0, Flamebait

      no its that the moderators who actually get points on this site have no fing clue and are too busy building l337 CS pwning machines, its a major /. problem.

      --

      "Slashdot, where telling the truth is overrated but lying is insightful."

    3. Re:humor by NanoGator · · Score: 2, Funny

      "whoever modded me Flamebait obviously has no sence of humor :)"

      Perhaps you should tell him that you're *giggle* kind of horny, but you've gotta go, so he should check your pics on a site ending in 18+.com.

      --
      "Derp de derp."
    4. Re:humor by ConceptJunkie · · Score: 1

      Would this by any chance be an implementation of Eliza?

      --
      You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
    5. Re:humor by Punkrokkr · · Score: 1

      Quite possibly, I had never heard of Eliza until I read TFA.

      --

      There's no emoticon for what I'm feeling! -- CBG, "The Computer Wore Menace Shoes"
    6. Re:humor by pyrote · · Score: 5, Funny

      Quite possibly, I had never heard of Eliza until I read TFA.

      And how does that make you feel?

      --
      THE WORLD IS GOING TO END!!!! eventually.
    7. Re:humor by nacturation · · Score: 4, Informative

      Ah, that brings back memories of something from a year ago ... Eliza vs. Pizza Hut.

      --
      Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
    8. Re:humor by getwhipped · · Score: 1

      Well, I would say that your post doesn't quite make sense. I would laugh if it were funny, but it is really hard to see what you were going for. Let me explain my confusion:

      From first reading, it could be interpreted like this: You are the dialog of a typical IM user who can't be distinguished from a brain-dead conversation bot? I can see some sarcasm, but only if I added a who. But, is it the typical IM user that can't be distinguished from the bot, or is it the dialog? Colloquially, it could be both. Instead of using who, we could use "that", thus changing the meaning of the sentence.

      But, what if you didn't want a who or that? What if you screwed up your "you're" and accidently kept the misplaced "the"? Taking out the "the" and changing the "you're", the sentence would now read: Your dialog of a typical IM user can't be distinguished from a brain-dead conversation bot? This obviously changes the sentence, giving a very differen't meaning.

      Now, why does this really matter? Well, leaving out (or leaving in) certain words caused more confusion than humor -- I'm sure the person who modded you down thought you were just saying bad things in the normal, negative flaimbait way.

      I apologize for being so technical a very small and unimportant sentence -- but you yelled at the modder, so I figure you deserved it. :)

      Cheers.

      --
      get whipped (you know you like it)
    9. Re:humor by Aeiri · · Score: 1

      Okay, you obviously have a PhD in english, you way over analyzed that sentence, and your IT culture skills are lacking.

      The reason he posted that, and the reason it's so funny, is because that would be the typical response a "bot" such as Alice or Eliza would give to the comment he was replying to.

  10. I must say that... by edsonmedina · · Score: 0, Funny

    I for one, welcome our new sex bots overlords.

  11. How he got listed as a sex bot... by dotgod · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Google for sex bots and look at the first link. It's an article that he wrote, and his screen name is in it.

    1. Re:How he got listed as a sex bot... by ginotech · · Score: 1

      any particular reason you decided to google for sex bots? ;)

    2. Re:How he got listed as a sex bot... by Gubbe · · Score: 1

      What bothers me more is that apparently now random bloggers / webmasters are classified as celebrities by someone...

    3. Re:How he got listed as a sex bot... by dotgod · · Score: 1

      Actually I Googled for his screenname to see what lists would come up. I found the article titled "sex bots", and decided to see if it would come up first when searching for "sex bots" and it did.

    4. Re:How he got listed as a sex bot... by op12 · · Score: 1

      Actually I Googled for his screenname to see what lists would come up. I found the article titled "sex bots", and decided to see if it would come up first when searching for "sex bots" and it did.

      Suuuuuuuuuure you did. Mmhmm, I believe you....Really!

    5. Re:How he got listed as a sex bot... by rufty_tufty · · Score: 1

      Does this not go back to the who point of TFA where no defence is possible once the observer has made up their mind :-)

      --
      "The weirdest thing about a mind, is that every answer that you find, is the basis of a brand new cliche" -
  12. And Perhaps one day... by EvilTwinSkippy · · Score: 4, Funny
    And perhaps one day we will have to pause and ask ourselves, are real people posting comments to slashdot, or are the comments generated by automatons trapsing through automated stimuli and responses?

    By some day, I think I meant around 1999 or so.

    --
    "Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
    --Dr.W.Edwards Deming
    1. Re:And Perhaps one day... by justforaday · · Score: 1

      Well, we already know the answer to who (or more precisely, what) posts the articles...

      --
      I'll turn into a supernova and burn up everything. Well I'll turn into a black little hole and you'll turn into string.
    2. Re:And Perhaps one day... by EvilTwinSkippy · · Score: 2, Insightful
      They have to be human. An automated system would have been fixed after the first few goofs.

      Never underestimate the power of a human doing a half-assed job.

      --
      "Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
      --Dr.W.Edwards Deming
    3. Re:And Perhaps one day... by mwvdlee · · Score: 1

      1. automatons trapsing through automated stimuli and responses?
      2. ???
      3. Profit!!!

      In Soviet Russia, automated stimuli and responses, trapsing through you!

      *beep*

      --
      Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
    4. Re:And Perhaps one day... by EvilTwinSkippy · · Score: 1

      And as we all know, humanity is DYING!

      --
      "Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
      --Dr.W.Edwards Deming
    5. Re:And Perhaps one day... by TedRiot · · Score: 1

      ...we can use SETI@home to find intelligent life in the Internet?

    6. Re:And Perhaps one day... by Harald+Paulsen · · Score: 1

      How does this relate to your mother?

      --
      Harald
    7. Re:And Perhaps one day... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      They have to be human. An automated system would have been fixed after the first few goof

      Like Windows ?

    8. Re:And Perhaps one day... by Patrik_AKA_RedX · · Score: 1

      psst. There are only 500 real people in the world. All those other people you see are human looking robots. The "planet" Earth is nothing more than some weird social experiment. All those things like fashion, arts, TV, radio internet, it's all randomly generated. I don't know what they're after. But as soon someone of the real people figures this out, they'll start hunting him down. Yes him. Females don't exist, well, at least not here. You should have suspected this by now.
      Every big event is a test for one of the real people. If you're one of the real people expect something like that to happen to you. But don't worry, they always make sure you survive (they need the data).
      They're on to me, but I've passed this knowledge on to you. Make the best of it. Watch out when all the "people" around you suddenly disappear, it means they're coming to get you.
      Must make my escape now. Don't let them get you....

    9. Re:And Perhaps one day... by sconeu · · Score: 1

      In Korea, only old bots read slashdot?

      --
      General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
    10. Re:And Perhaps one day... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What about a beowolf cluster of these humans?

    11. Re:And Perhaps one day... by intangible · · Score: 1

      If I had mod-points today, I would mod you insightful, or informative... but of course "they" didn't give them to me today. "They" knew I know and don't want the others to find out. Or maybe your whole post was a test by them to see if we know what they don't want us to know!

    12. Re:And Perhaps one day... by EvilTwinSkippy · · Score: 1
      Cue the weather balloon.

      /I'm the new Number 2

      --
      "Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
      --Dr.W.Edwards Deming
    13. Re:And Perhaps one day... by bkr1_2k · · Score: 1

      Christ, that means I've had sex with 30 robots! No wonder people call me a geek!

      --
      "Growing old is inevitable; growing up is optional."
    14. Re:And Perhaps one day... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Gary Stollman! Is that you in disguise?

  13. GATTACA by Transdimentia · · Score: 5, Funny

    Forget genetic discrimination in the future, I can't even farking sign up for slashdot anymore. Soon I won't be able to get my welfare check because of these stupid turing tests!

    1. Re:GATTACA by soft_guy · · Score: 1

      OMFG! They are making you take a test to get welfare? That's totally against the law! I better call the ACLU!

      --
      Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
  14. Turing Test by AndreiK · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Isn't this sort of what the article about captchas a few days back was?

    Most AI today is extremely specialized. It's not hard to design something that appears to think, if it only has to check for 3 cases.

    The problem with speech is that assumming all humans use perfect rules, which they don't, and assuming all computers know the perfect rules, which they don't as well, creates a logistical nightmare. Computers work well with numbers.

    Did he say hi? Yes he did, so let's say hi back.

    It is really hard to design a bot that would actually analyze what they are saying.

    Did he say hi? Yes, he greeted me with a "hello" "Hello to you too."

    1. Re:Turing Test by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      > It is really hard to design a bot that would actually analyze what they are saying.

      Dunno. Why dont you give it a try and get back to us in a few hours to let us know how you went?

      Please to not reply to this message. I am a bot. Or am I... Befuddled... Confused... CPU meltdown .. immenent

    2. Re:Turing Test by fireboy1919 · · Score: 1

      That's not the problem with speech at all. We could deal with errors, were that the big problem. We can also create "perfect rules," or even (what speech AIs actually use) fuzzy rules that allow for errors (e.g. "that sentence contains a lot of greeting indicators. It's probably a greeting; I'll ignore the part about the dog and the fact that hello is spelled 'heloe'.")

      The problem is the sheer volume of rules needed.
        It's just way too much work to do by hand. All that is really needed is an automatic technique to get those rules in there.

      I know what you're thinking: "but I know what the words mean and a computer's rule-based response wouldn't know even if you filled it full of rules!"

      How do you determine the meaning of words? (I'm sure that there will be some who disagree with me here). You've memorized what each mean, and rules of syntax and grammer that tell you how to combine them. It's one giant expert system; you've got a gigantic collection of rules stored in your head that help you understand language. This is no different.

      --
      Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
  15. Favourite bit by SimilarityEngine · · Score: 5, Funny

    My favourite snippet has to be:

    jmstriegel: no, really. I'm quite human.
    jmstriegel: test me if you want
    shymuffin32: ok
    shymuffin32: why do you like music?
    jmstriegel: hmm. i've never really considered that.
    jmstriegel: hell, i'm not going to be able to contrive a good answer for that one. ask me something else.
    shymuffin32: jeesus, you're worse than eliza

    It's not him that's stupid (as claimed elsewhere), it's these shymuffin32 morons.

    --
    Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
    1. Re:Favourite bit by spellraiser · · Score: 1
      Oh really? Would YOU believe that someone who you thought was a robot beforehand, and who replies to your question with a generic response that seems to be only a way to wriggle out of the question, was a human? Preconceptions go a really long way you know ... and the guy's response looks perfectly generic.

      Convincing someone you're human might just be harder than one might think - at least a bit more trouble than just answering a few questions.

      --
      I hear there's rumors on the Slashdots
    2. Re:Favourite bit by Black+Perl · · Score: 1

      They're both morons.

      I find that snippet hilarious, because jmstriegel is supposedly trying to act human, yet his answers are exactly like a bot.

      I mean, how hard can it be to show that you understand the question?

      Of course, shymuffin32's question is a ridiculously stupid one too... if you want to test a human you need to ask a specific question about current events or something. Bots are designed to answer vague questions like his.

      --
      bp
    3. Re:Favourite bit by SimilarityEngine · · Score: 1

      Ah, but would you leap to conclusions after asking only one question (do you like music)? I trust not, because you are a more intelligent individual than the shymuffin32s of this world.

      --
      Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
    4. Re:Favourite bit by kfx · · Score: 4, Funny

      Oh really? Would YOU believe that someone... who replies to your question with a generic response that seems to be only a way to wriggle out of the question, was a human?

      No, I'd believe they're a politician.

    5. Re:Favourite bit by schon · · Score: 5, Funny

      No, I'd believe they're a politician.

      Either way, there'd be no real intelligence. :o)

    6. Re:Favourite bit by schon · · Score: 1

      jmstriegel is supposedly trying to act human, yet his answers are exactly like a bot.

      I mean, how hard can it be to show that you understand the question?


      Actually, it looks to me like jmstriegel is trying hard to answer how he thinks a bot wouldn't respond. He knows he's being tested, and he responds with what he thinks will differentiate him from a bot.

      If you didn't know you were being tested, and were asked that question, would *you* answer with a vague, nonsensical response? Probably not.

      Which (I think) is why bots are so easy to spot - the designers come up with things that they think are good, but that real people would never say.

    7. Re:Favourite bit by JabberWokky · · Score: 2, Insightful
      Why do you like music?

      (Okay, you have less than 10 seconds to answer).

      --
      Evan

      --
      "$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
    8. Re:Favourite bit by FooAtWFU · · Score: 1
      I like music because it plays directly upon your emotions more so than other mediums. Want a spooky scene in the movie? Is some menace lurking just around the next corner? Just drop in the right music in the movie and the audience is *yours*. Love? Hate? Sorrow? Tragedy? Joy? Bumbling clownish incompetence? Say it with music.

      Well, that took longer than ten seconds, but I had STARTED within ten seconds. I could have split it among several messages...

      --
      The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
    9. Re:Favourite bit by Black+Perl · · Score: 1

      Right. Which proves my point that the question is a stupid one for a "turing test."

      My answer would have been something like, "I like to chill out to it. It relaxes me" instead of the bot-like "I can't answer your question. Ask another one." Isn't that one of the Magic 8-Ball answers? See how stupid that is?

      --
      bp
    10. Re:Favourite bit by Black+Perl · · Score: 1

      Actually, it looks to me like jmstriegel is trying hard to answer how he thinks a bot wouldn't respond. He knows he's being tested, and he responds with what he thinks will differentiate him from a bot.

      Are you kidding? His response is basically "I can't answer that question. Ask another one." Like I said in another post, that sounds like something a Magic 8-Ball would say. If you've ever conversed with Eliza or other bots, you'd see they have an extensive list of ways to avoid answering a question. With responses just like his.

      If you didn't know you were being tested, and were asked that question, would *you* answer with a vague, nonsensical response? Probably not.

      Right. But a bot would. You seem to be contradicting your own argument.

      --
      bp
    11. Re:Favourite bit by lxmeister · · Score: 1

      I don't like music.

    12. Re:Favourite bit by l0b0 · · Score: 1
      shymuffin32: why do you like music?

      Proper answer: "dunno. thats sort of a zen-ish q, isnt it?" (f-ups intended). See? No more accusations. Of course, some people might like being called an idiot even less.

    13. Re:Favourite bit by schon · · Score: 1

      His response is basically "I can't answer that question. Ask another one."

      Yes, how does that contradict what I said?

      What I said was - he doesn't know enough about how a bot would answer, so he answers how he thinks it *wouldn't* answer. However it turns out (exactly as I said, and you repeated) that his answer is exactly what one would expect from a bot.

      Note I didn't say that *YOU* don't know how a bot would answer, but how *HE* doesn't (there is a difference, you know.)

      You seem to be contradicting your own argument.

      No, you are not understanding what I'm writing.

    14. Re:Favourite bit by Paradise+Pete · · Score: 1
      Why do you like music? (Okay, you have less than 10 seconds to answer).

      It's got a good beat and it's easy to dance to. I give it a thirty-five.

    15. Re:Favourite bit by MannyO · · Score: 1

      I actually thought about it for 3 seconds while I was reading the article... ...because it gives me goosebumps.

    16. Re:Favourite bit by kancerman · · Score: 1

      How can a machine(language or otherwise) tell what kind of music moves itself ?? I like music that moves my head ... shakes me up ... Tell me, machine, what "moves" you ??

    17. Re:Favourite bit by Black+Perl · · Score: 1

      No, you are not understanding what I'm writing.

      You got that right.

      --
      bp
    18. Re:Favourite bit by loucura! · · Score: 1

      Tell me, machine, what "moves" you ??

      A car... no wait... an airplane!

      --
      Black and grey are both shades of white.
    19. Re:Favourite bit by SamSim · · Score: 1

      So THAT'S it! Of course! Suddenly, the last fifty years of political history make perfect sense.

    20. Re:Favourite bit by siim04 · · Score: 1

      Hmm, so You are saying the AI will soon pick up politics and rule us all (from UN, White House, etc.)?

    21. Re:Favourite bit by kancerman · · Score: 1

      I call you on bad parsing of the question !! Hello bot !!

    22. Re:Favourite bit by loucura! · · Score: 1

      Do you like to call on bad parsing of the question?

      --
      Black and grey are both shades of white.
  16. MOD PARENT FUNNY by SimilarityEngine · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Obviously a moderator here has never used chatbots.

    --
    Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
    1. Re:MOD PARENT FUNNY by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2

      Ok, this makes no sense... how come the parent has been modded funny, while the grandparent, who told the actual joke, is modded flamebait?

      And it isn't even Monday! Sheesh... :)

    2. Re:MOD PARENT FUNNY by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You must be new here!

    3. Re:MOD PARENT FUNNY by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Nope...we have lives....

    4. Re:MOD PARENT FUNNY by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It is not Monday, but it is the day Tuesday after a holiday weekend. So it is actually worse than a Monday today.

  17. Skype Prank by Noksagt · · Score: 5, Interesting
    There is another link going around about an intentional Skype prank:
    A profile is put up with a girl's name and picture, and put in "Skype me" mode. Within minutes some seedy guy will invariably try calling/chatting, and there's a little program I made running the whole time which will partner up people 2 at a time, and send messages from the first person to the second, & vice versa. This way both people think they're talking to a girl, when they find out, well, they're not normally too happy about it... It'll also accept and receive all files sent, and if someone tries to call, it'll accept the call with an answerphone message and log what the person says.
    1. Re:Skype Prank by xxdinkxx · · Score: 1

      That has to be the most amusing thing I have heard of all day! keep up the good work. This program wouldn't happened to be gpl'd or otherwise osi style license? I would love to be able to add asterisk / other telephony support to something like that. That program has potential- even if it is fairly trivial right now.

    2. Re:Skype Prank by DingerX · · Score: 1
      muhahaha, even with a low-bandwidth set of webpages, that dude's swamped out his 128kbit line. Somebody give that man an OC3! For the good of the world!
      [4:54:45 a.m.] I'm a guy [4:54:51 a.m.] are you a guy? [4:54:58 a.m.] this is very confusing. [4:55:16 a.m.] whaaaat [4:55:23 a.m.] aren't you a sexy babe? [4:55:34 a.m.] arent u a sexy babe [4:57:42 a.m.] are you sexybabe86? [4:58:01 a.m.] no... arent u [4:58:13 a.m.] no [5:46:10 a.m.] hello


      still giggling
    3. Re:Skype Prank by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      There is a famous real world one that you can play. If you introduce two people to each other, tell each one that the other is mostly deaf, and that they have to SPEAK LOUDLY.

      At the end, they'll shout at each other. At this point you can leave. Very funny.

    4. Re:Skype Prank by Mr_Silver · · Score: 3, Funny
      A profile is put up with a girl's name and picture, and put in "Skype me" mode. Within minutes some seedy guy will invariably try calling/chatting, and there's a little program I made running the whole time which will partner up people 2 at a time, and send messages from the first person to the second, & vice versa.

      Very funny that one, but I can beat it.

      This is what happens when you call a chinese takeaway, put it on hold, call another chinese takeaway, make an order, unhold the first takeaway and get the second to repeat the order back to the first.

      As you can imagine, the second one thinks the first is trying to order. It gets funny when they're trying to work out who will be picking up the food :)

      --
      Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
    5. Re:Skype Prank by mbbac · · Score: 2, Informative

      I've heard that prank way too many times on the Howard Stern show. They call it "Chinese Confusion."

      --

      mbbac

    6. Re:Skype Prank by djpenguin808 · · Score: 1
      That reminds me of a fun trick I learned seven years ago, when pagers were still popular.

      You simply wait until two people you know with pagers are in the same toom together (preferrably with a group), then leave the room and page each of them with the other's pager number.

      Then you go back into the room, wait for the pages to arrive, and see how long it takes them (and how many rounds of pager tag) to sort out what just happened.


      The hard part is not laughing

      --
      "Why don't you interface with my ass...by biting it!" -Bender B. Rodriguez
    7. Re:Skype Prank by bastardoperator · · Score: 1

      Yep, though I think that one of these programs would be perfect for tech support, especally if you could make a record of prevous conversations tied to phone number. It may actually give better service.

  18. Only Allow Messages ... by hagrin · · Score: 5, Informative

    ... from those buddies on your list. I really fail to see exactly what the "security" risk is here - if you're hypersensitive about the people messaging you, then you can choose to be hypersensitive, lose some functionality and turn off the "randomness" factor. Most people exchange IM names through some other means of communications, either verbally or written, so this loss of functionality can be sidestepped while maintaining your online secrecy.

  19. Cute by NoTheory · · Score: 4, Interesting

    that really is a clever passage.

    What people should remember is that the turing test requires that the inquistor is competent. If the inquisitor is not (i.e. random AIM idiots), then the test isn't vaild, cause these people can't tell intelligences apart anyway. Also, the inquisitor is supposed to convince themselves via sufficient interaction w/ the system being tested. AIM chats, particularly short one-off dialogues probably aren't a good staging ground for the turing test.

    Also, a lot of naive people don't know the capabilities (and limitations) of Artificial Intelligence, so sadly, i'm not surprised at this guy's - or should i say robot's - results.

    --
    There are lives at stake here!
    1. Re:Cute by EvilTwinSkippy · · Score: 1

      No, the Turing test calls for a person of "Average intelligence." There is nothing about "competant" in the definition. Average intelliegence is an IQ of 100, average literacy is somewhere around a 5th grade reading level. (Newspapers are written for a 5th grade reading level for that reason.)

      --
      "Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
      --Dr.W.Edwards Deming
    2. Re:Cute by SimilarityEngine · · Score: 1

      IIRC, the tester was to simulatanously query (remotely) a human and a computer at the same time (not necessarily with the same questions), in order to compare the types of responses, and then decide which was the real human. You don't just use one tester, you use many - a successful chatbot would cause the testers to err about 50% of the time.

      --
      Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
    3. Re:Cute by NoTheory · · Score: 1

      Here's a copy of the paper. Find for me where it states that the person should be of average intelligence (i've looked and can't find any passage regarding average intelligence).

      It's a functional test. Intelligent is as intelligent does. If the inquisitor can't identify an intelligence, then the test can't take place. So i would say that turing's goal in proposing the test entails a requirement of competence.

      --
      There are lives at stake here!
    4. Re:Cute by EvilTwinSkippy · · Score: 1
      Find me one reference to "competence" in said paper. He's got lots of stuff about why only digital computers could work in the game. And lots of stuff about balancing the questions so that they aren't too easy or too hard for either man or machine.

      But there is not one reference to the intelligence, competance, etc of the questioner. They can be a genious or an idiot. If he or she cannot tell the difference between a person and the machine, the machine is considered intelligent.

      --
      "Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
      --Dr.W.Edwards Deming
    5. Re:Cute by NoTheory · · Score: 1

      Quoting you:But there is not one reference to the intelligence, competance, etc of the questioner.

      Exactly. There's nothing in the paper to support what you've asserted. Quoting me: So i would say that turing's goal in proposing the test entails a requirement of competence.

      My point was that looking at Turing's goal in proposing the test, and what it requires should indicate that human inquisitors need to be able to identify objects that are intelligent. If they can't, the test can't test for intelligence. It's not just about fooling some people, it's about an intelligence standing up to all reasonable inquiry. If your inquisitor is unable to provide reasonable inquiry, you're not performing a turing test.

      Practical example: Alzhimers patients would not be suitable inquisitors. They have to be competent.

      --
      There are lives at stake here!
    6. Re:Cute by StillNeedMoreCoffee · · Score: 1

      On the contrary, the Turning test is exactly about fooling some people. That's the whole point or more precisly, to come up with an effective imitation of intellegent behaviour such that it is indistinguishable from a human intellegence.

      He was using a black box test. You send a question in and get an answer out, just like the Gender game it was designed around. "Intellegence is as Intellegence does" where we abstract out all but the rational components that we describe as intellegence and not the "stlye" or "emotional" complents we might associate as other characteristics of humans.

      As to competency, I think the Turing test does not set a standard for who the questioner is or what questions to ask. If an AI program can act intellegently enough to fool any person then it has achieve some level of not only language capability but some level of problem solving capability.

      Now that begs the question, if the said program has some language capability and some problem solving capability, lets say to solve a completely new problem that it has never seen before, then do we say it has understanding?

      Which begs the question, what is understanding, that is not just language ability and problem solving? Maybe we are just complicated machines with a big ego and and a software bug that feeds back and makes us self aware.

      I think it was Turing that talked about building a machine that passed the Turing test and one that you built to only tell the truth. If you asked it if it actually thought or was self aware and it said "Yes" would you believe it?

    7. Re:Cute by NoTheory · · Score: 1

      On the contrary, the Turning test is exactly about fooling some people. That's the whole point or more precisly, to come up with an effective imitation of intellegent behaviour such that it is indistinguishable from a human intellegence.

      Uh, what? Besides the direct denial of what i said, how is "com[ing] up with an effective imitation of intelligent behaviour such that it is indistinguishable from a human intellegence." Contrary to anything i've said? Isn't that in fact, exactly what i've said?

      As to competency, I think the Turing test does not set a standard for who the questioner is or what questions to ask. If an AI program can act intellegently enough to fool any person then it has achieve some level of not only language capability but some level of problem solving capability.

      Whatever, i've already explained this. And when you can't win using simple explanations, it's time to resort to cliches:

      "You can fool some people all of the time, and you can fool all people some of the time, but you can't fool all people all of the time."

      This is the point of the turing test. A true intelligence passes the turing test because it's not fooling anyone, it is intelligent. If you're only fooling some of the people all of the time, or all of the people only some of the time, you're not passing the turing test. Now, if you've only got one shot at figuring out whether a system is an intelligence you don't one of the members of some people who can be fooled all of the time. I.e. someone who's competent. And hopefully they'll get enough time with the system being tested to weed out the "all people some of the time" thing.

      --
      There are lives at stake here!
    8. Re:Cute by Dun+Malg · · Score: 2, Insightful
      On the contrary, the Turning test is exactly about fooling some people. That's the whole point or more precisly, to come up with an effective imitation of intellegent behaviour such that it is indistinguishable from a human intellegence.

      If the computer must be indistinguishable from a human intelligence, then it's not about fooling some of the people, it's about fooling all of the people. Not just those of average intelligence, but anyone and everyone they stick in front of the keyboard.

      If it has to pass all tests, there's no rational scientific reason to test it against anything but your strongest subjects. If you're designing (say) a door that has to withstand a blow from a 10lb sledge hammer, there's absolutely no point in hitting it with any hammer smaller than a 10 pounder.

      --
      If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
    9. Re:Cute by EvilTwinSkippy · · Score: 1
      Well actually we would have to score the ability to detect the computer like we would score the ability to detect a tone, or a frequency of light at a given amplitude. In neurology the standard for "thresholds of perception" are usually the point at which 50% of people can detect the sensation and 50% of people cannot.

      In this case, a computer will have passed the Turing test if it can fool at least 50% of the people who interrogate it.

      In regards to your 10lb hammer analogy, you have some big gaps in your spec. Is it supposed to take one blow from a 10lb hammer, or repeated blows? How many? Is the door allowed to deform? How much?

      While there may not be a rational "scientific" reason to test a door with a hammer smaller than 10 lbs, I can give you plenty of irrational engineering tests that would employ one. (Especially if you are testing for fatigue.)

      --
      "Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
      --Dr.W.Edwards Deming
    10. Re:Cute by ebyrob · · Score: 1

      No, the Turing test calls for a person of "Average intelligence." There is nothing about "competant" in the definition. Average intelliegence is an IQ of 100

      That's testee, not necessarily testor(s)...

    11. Re:Cute by Dun+Malg · · Score: 2, Insightful
      Well actually we would have to score the ability to detect the computer like we would score the ability to detect a tone, or a frequency of light at a given amplitude. In neurology the standard for "thresholds of perception" are usually the point at which 50% of people can detect the sensation and 50% of people cannot. In this case, a computer will have passed the Turing test if it can fool at least 50% of the people who interrogate it.

      I think the problem we have here is the definition of "passing" the Turing Test. Turing himself used the term very specifically, as in "passing = fooling the interogator", but he never really went into what constitutes an adequate interrogator! The purpose of the Test in the first place was really only to bring the debate around the question of "can machines think" down out of the realm of theology and make it testable. It seems that he probably had other scientists in mind for interrogators, as that was with whom the debate was. What portion of the population would be fooled is a metric somewhat separate from the test itself, but using that, fooling half the people in a random sample seems like too low a threshold. 100% is probably too high. Turing himself only briefly hinted at this once, saying that it'd take at least 50 years before a machine could pass 70% of the time, and 100 or more years before it could fool anyone.

      --
      If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
    12. Re:Cute by m50d · · Score: 1
      If the computer must be indistinguishable from a human intelligence, then it's not about fooling some of the people, it's about fooling all of the people

      IIRC the original turing test was not about making it indistinguishable from a human but rather no more distinguishable from a human than a man is from a woman via the same method.

      --
      I am trolling
    13. Re:Cute by ccp · · Score: 1

      I think the problem we have here is the definition of "passing" the Turing Test. Turing himself used the term very specifically, as in "passing = fooling the interogator", but he never really went into what constitutes an adequate interrogator!

      Maybe we must stop thinking of the Turing test as an "yes or no" problem, but as a "relative" one.
      Who does the program fools?
      What percentile of testers?

      When the program fools everyone, I, for one, will welcome our new test-passing overlords.

      Cheers,
      Carlos Cesar

    14. Re:Cute by StillNeedMoreCoffee · · Score: 1

      "If it has to pass all tests, there's no rational scientific reason to test it against anything but your strongest subjects."

      I don't think the Turing test requires passing "All tests". If you look at humans, they come in all shapes and levels of intellegence. You don't day an individual is intellegent or not, absoulutely not, you test them against tests that ranks their intellegence relative to others. So for individuals you don't hit them with a 10 pounder, you slowly turn up the volume until they exhibit hearing as a way to rate how well they can hear. It is not a digital thing nor is the a definition for intellegence, that was Turing's point in the test. Intellegence is what intellegence does but at this point general intellegence is a subjective call. That is why people have to ask questions to try an see if effective general intellegence has been achieved.

      And yes it is fooling people given that many would say that intellegence comes from that indefinable human quality. To be human has a whole range of behaviours of which intellegence is one. So in that sense we are talking about maybe building a partial human, maybe one with flattening of affect or autistic, one that is missing much, but it can talk and solve problems. The trick is what standard to use. The Turing test just says that the program has fooled the testers in identifying it as a machine. So in that sense it is yes fooling. Just as the gender test it was copied from where someone has to guess the gender of hidden individual by asking questions to determain if they are male or female. Usually the one that is 'it' is trying to fool the questioner.

      Again the Turing test is a subjective test by the questioner. The machine does not have to pass "All" tests. For general intellengence there is too much of a problem state to possibly test everything so the Turing test is designed as a spot check by and individual or individuals to see if things check out.

  20. really, it can't be that hard by theheff · · Score: 5, Funny

    I mean, have you seen the typical chat room conversation?

    user1: ~~OMG~~
    bot1: Want to see my sexy pics?
    bot2: Want to see my sexy pics?
    bot3: Want to see my sexy pics?
    user2: WUT!?
    bot1: Want to see my sexy pics?
    bot2: Want to see my sexy pics?
    user3: LoL
    bot1: Want to see my sexy pics?
    bot2: Want to see my sexy pics?
    bot3: Want to see my sexy pics?
    user1: You LOL
    bot1: Want to see my sexy pics?
    bot2: Want to see my sexy pics?
    bot3: Want to see my sexy pics?
    user3: STFU LOL!
    user2: OMG hAhA!
    bot1: Want to see my sexy pics?
    bot2: Want to see my sexy pics?
    bot3: Want to see my sexy pics?
    user1: JK :) !
    bot1: Want to see my sexy pics?

    1. Re:really, it can't be that hard by roman_mir · · Score: 1

      pffft. Here is how it really goes:

      10 user1: asl?
      20 user2: asl?
      30 user3: asl?
      40 user2: Want to see my sexy pics?
      50 user3: Want to see my sexy pics?
      60 user1: Want to see my sexy pics?
      80 /.er: how do I profit from this?
      90 GOTO 10

    2. Re:really, it can't be that hard by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      bot1: Do you want to cyber with me?
      user1: No.
      bot1: Please cyber with me?
      user1: No.

      Here is an interesting encapsulation of the quality of discussion on IM.

    3. Re:really, it can't be that hard by twosmokes · · Score: 3, Funny

      This is probably my favorite look at the IMing community.

  21. Shaving problems? by AviLazar · · Score: 4, Funny

    I stubled across this article today

    You should try the Mach 3. It's tri-blade system gives you an extra smooth shave so you too can avoid stublingacross articles.

    --

    I mod down so you can mod up. Your welcome.
    1. Re:Shaving problems? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's tri-blade system gives you an extra smooth shave...

      Folks, if you're going to write a bot to make random comments on slashdot, at the very least try to make it use proper spelling and grammar. Please?

    2. Re:Shaving problems? by Neoncow · · Score: 1

      Obviously it's a contraction for "it has". ;)

    3. Re:Shaving problems? by jkiryako · · Score: 1

      That's all wrong. If you want to pass the Turing Test you need some misspellings. Only a human would do that.

  22. Funny reading by smartdreamer · · Score: 4, Informative
    Here's a mirror.

    Makes me think of Azimov short stories.
    I like the conclusion.

    1. Re:Funny reading by EvilTwinSkippy · · Score: 1

      My favorite is the tale of what happens when someone researches a bit too deeply into the nature of humor. I won't spoil it, but it starts off with a Wisecrack who starts telling jokes to a computer to figure out the pattern...

      --
      "Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
      --Dr.W.Edwards Deming
  23. wel.. by FidelCatsro · · Score: 2, Interesting

    What do you expect on AOL ?

    I have the ultimate weapon in AI detection , it's called severe dyslexia .
    If I don't spell check and proof read then no bot could hold a conversation with me .
    Instant messaging is not a great place to rely on spell checking and proof reading , but it does rely on our minds ability to see past simpel speling/grammer erors (intentional)

    --
    The only things certain in war are Propaganda and Death. You can never be sure which is which though
    1. Re:wel.. by EvilTwinSkippy · · Score: 1

      Forget not the power of Yoda. Speak like him and confuse them you will. When in doubt of word order you are, think like an HP calculator you must.

      --
      "Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
      --Dr.W.Edwards Deming
    2. Re:wel.. by FidelCatsro · · Score: 1

      Insightful was that , funny/insightfull with parent the up moderate do .way a also is order word reverse .tricky slightly is it understand to. fun of lot a though .

      --
      The only things certain in war are Propaganda and Death. You can never be sure which is which though
    3. Re:wel.. by FxChiP · · Score: 1

      Talk like Yoda, you cannot. Stop trying, you must. hmmm...

      The reversing of words, it is not. The switching around of sentence parts, it is. The beginning of the sentence, the end is in Yoda speak. :)

      A nice day, I hope you have. :D

    4. Re:wel.. by FidelCatsro · · Score: 1

      But speak like Yoda i can . little faith have you hmmm .

      --
      The only things certain in war are Propaganda and Death. You can never be sure which is which though
  24. TFA by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    How I failed the Turing test
    Posted Sep 4 2005 - 1:26pm by Jason Striegel
    Filed under ai | celebrities | computer science | psychology | technology

    Some time around March, I started receiving a number of random instant messages from people I've never met before. Apparantly, my AIM alias had been added to at least two online lists and people all over the world were busy importing me as a buddy.

    I say "at least two" because the people who contacted me fell into one of two camps: people who thought they were contacting a celebrity and people who thought they were contacting a robot. As I talked to more and more of these folks, I began to discover something really disturbing about myself:

    I consistently fail to be perceived as human.

    When this first started happening, a typical conversation with a celebrity admirer would go something like this (participant's IM handle is fabricated):

    angelcutie42: hi!
    jmstriegel: hey. what's up? do i know you?
    angelcutie42: no
    angelcutie42: someone gave me a bunch of screen names. i heard you are a celebrity.
    jmstriegel: that's weird. i'm afraid i'm not a celeb at all.
    angelcutie42: oh.
    angelcutie42: bye

    This was entertaining at first, but it quickly became a bit depressing as the angelcutie42s of the wired world would, one after the other, decide I wasn't worth talking to if I wasn't a celebrity. Want to know what it's like being dumped by a random groupie 5 times a day? Not good at all, thank you very much.

    So that's when I started hamming it up a bit. I'm not really proud of it, but my fans wanted a celebrity.. so I gave them one:

    sexybumkin123: hey.. so you're famous right?
    jmstriegel: Who me? I'm a movie star.
    jmstriegel: Shit, I gotta go.
    jmstriegel: My limo just arrived and Paris wants her damned sidekick back.
    sexybumkin123: Oh my god. Come back!
    sexybumkin123: I love you!!!!

    My groupies loved it. The more celebrity balogna I manufactured, the more they ate it, and the more they loved me.

    Then, something strange started happening. As my career as an artificial celebrity started to take off, I began to receive some strange IMs from a whole new class of random people. These new admirers were convinced I was a robot... and it suddenly became clear to me that something was very wrong.

    Nobody would believe I was human. In one troubling conversation after another, I felt my intellectual teeter-totter quickly tip from from actual to artificial.

    fratburger86: hey. so you're a sex bot?
    jmstriegel: umm, no. who the hell are you?
    fratburger86: yeah you are! i found your im online
    jmstriegel: that's fine and all, but i'm pretty sure you have me confused with someone else.
    fratburger86: just a normal chat bot then?
    jmstriegel: nope. i'm human
    fratburger86: ok. sure.
    fratburger86: asl?
    jmstriegel: no thanks.
    fratburger86: what?
    jmstriegel: i'm not really interested in any conversation that starts with "asl"
    fratburger86: oh come on. say something sexy.
    jmstriegel: seriously, i think you want to talk to someone else.
    fratburger86: i knew it!!!
    fratburger86: you are totally a robot!

    This is where things took a turn for the worse.

    1. Re:TFA by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Currently the parent is rated as 20% Offtopic. TFA is off topic?! I must be on slashdot!

  25. Taco.. by Andrewkov · · Score: 0
    Don't try to read anything deep into it.

    OK, Taco, thanks for the warning, since I live and breath Slashdot and take all your postings so seriously... ;-)

  26. weizenbaum by Borg453b · · Score: 4, Funny

    A couple of years ago Joseph Weizenbaum (Author of Eliza) held a guest lecture at IMV (Information & Media Science). I was thrilled and during a break I went up and asked him for a autograph. He gave me a sad look as he wrote down his autograph and email.

    It struck me how materialistically obsessed that enquiry seemed - and I regretted asking.

    I guess he had never forseen that his critic of the "strong AI" movement would one day be used for IM based pron-ads.

    --

    - Mad, ingenous - they've both left you puzzled -
  27. In General, when speaking of /. by The+Ape+With+No+Name · · Score: 4, Insightful

    This statement:

    Don't try to read anything deep into it.

    holds true.

    --
    Comparing it to Windows will be a moot point, since El Dorado is going to have a 40% larger code base than XP.
    1. Re:In General, when speaking of /. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      In General, when speaking of /. This statement: Don't try to read anything deep into it. holds true

      The fact that you are correct won't stop some people from trying...

      The irony involved in my not being able to tell what the horribly mangled string of letters below is entertaining, but still annoying.

    2. Re:In General, when speaking of /. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Unless it's something related to Microsoft. Let's say Bill Gates states "I like ice cream". This will be interpreted by the slashdot community as: "I like ice cream, therefore I will make sure I possess all the ice cream in the world for my own private use. I shall soon take over and own the entire country of USA and once Longhorn is in place, I shall use its hidden features to implant RFIDs in all Americans and control their minds from my dark and sinister palace overlooking Seattle. Then I shall use the American hordes to implement DRM on everything non-American, from toasters to bananas, forcing the rest of the world into starvation until they all succumb and buy MS products and fall under my control, except possibly Indians to whom I shall outsource the job of making ice cream for me forever. Mwahahahah!"

    3. Re:In General, when speaking of /. by n6kuy · · Score: 1

      Heh. Not to worry. Because of Slashdot, you can't read anything at all...

      --
      If you disagree with me on social issues, then it's pretty clear that you are a narrow-minded bigot.
  28. Computers work well with numbers by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Computers only work with numbers, and only two of them at that: zero and one.

    It amazes me that so-called "nerds" can't quite comprehend that the box in front of them has no intelligence whatever, but is only a box full of on-off switches that are cleverly arranged to do math and manipulate symbols.

    However, you CAN download your intelligence into a computer. It's called "typing." Previous generations downloaded their intelligence into books, without the benefit of computers.

    "When I twist the key, the door knob knows to unlock itself."

    Artificial intelligence? Bah, there's a severe shortage of the real thing.

    1. Re:Computers work well with numbers by tolan-b · · Score: 1

      "However, you CAN download your intelligence into a computer. It's called "typing." Previous generations downloaded their intelligence into books, without the benefit of computers."

      Wrong. They downloaded the output of their intelligence, and knowledge, into books, which is a very different thing.

      Programming is closer to what you seem to be describing.

      However systems can be built that learn certain things for themselves, which does lead to them having their own intelligence of a sort.

      Incidentally, your brain is just a bunch of switches too.

    2. Re:Computers work well with numbers by AndreiK · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Basically when we think, we can change our thought rules on the fly.

      For example, if someone says to me: "The word dog is the same as a canine" I would learn that, and file it away, and the next time I encounter the word canine, I would be able to associate it with the furry thing with 4 legs whenever.

      Until a computer can truly rewrite its own code on the fly, it will not be able to emulate a human brain.

      Sure there may be ways of layering scripts in order to give the impression that the computer is changing its code, but the sheer volume, as somebody stated, of the different things we know makes it impractical. If you were to train a computer like a baby, it would take a long time to get it even close to an average human intelligence.

    3. Re:Computers work well with numbers by Dephex+Twin · · Score: 1

      I don't quite follow your example. That is something that a computer could do easily. And in fact, once you told a computer that dog = canine, it would never need to be reminded once.

      It seems to me that the difficult thing is getting a computer to take what it knows and go further with it that is the real hurdle-- say, to have the computer with knowledge of a dog read or hear some information about canines, notice the similarities, and figure out whether or not they might be the same thing.

      --

      If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe. -- Carl Sagan
    4. Re:Computers work well with numbers by tolan-b · · Score: 1

      Well the example you give is perfectly possible with simple code, in fact I believe the ALICE chatbot can do just that. However it's a pretty trivial example.

      For more interesting computer learning see neural networks simulations.

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neural_network

    5. Re:Computers work well with numbers by AndreiK · · Score: 1

      What I meant was the levels on which you could do it. You can have a computer do one level, as in you can make it search prior knowledge. With a bit of coding, you can make it do the next level, which is to not only search prior knowledge, but make connections. What you cannot currently make a computer do is to actually recode itself to speak about dogs - which can be called as a stretch of a person getting a pHD in Canine Development, or some such.

      A human can change his thought patterns, if he tries hard enough. He can force himself to study, he can force himself to change his mind, etc. A computer cannot currently do that without human involvement.

    6. Re:Computers work well with numbers by Dephex+Twin · · Score: 1

      I'll change my thought patterns (on the fly) regarding what you said. I think we do agree, more or less-- computers are complex but fixed in many ways, while the human mind is abstract, fluid, and dynamic.

      --

      If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe. -- Carl Sagan
    7. Re:Computers work well with numbers by m50d · · Score: 1
      Sure there may be ways of layering scripts in order to give the impression that the computer is changing its code, but the sheer volume, as somebody stated, of the different things we know makes it impractical.

      Just give it a basic set of rules about how to write rules and let it go from there. With a modern dynamic language like python or probably plain old TCL it's very much possible. Of course, as you say, the problem is training it, but we take the best part of 2 decades bringing up children, wouldn't you expect the same?

      --
      I am trolling
  29. Turing test.... by bassgoonist · · Score: 1

    I don't know about the turing test...but this site certainly didn't pass the slashdot test... *DOA*

    --
    You can tell I'm an aries because of my ram.
  30. TFA :) by Nichotin · · Score: 2, Informative

    Some time around March, I started receiving a number of random instant messages from people I've never met before. Apparantly, my AIM alias had been added to at least two online lists and people all over the world were busy importing me as a buddy.

    I say "at least two" because the people who contacted me fell into one of two camps: people who thought they were contacting a celebrity and people who thought they were contacting a robot. As I talked to more and more of these folks, I began to discover something really disturbing about myself:

    I consistently fail to be perceived as human.

    When this first started happening, a typical conversation with a celebrity admirer would go something like this (participant's IM handle is fabricated):

    angelcutie42: hi!
    jmstriegel: hey. what's up? do i know you?
    angelcutie42: no
    angelcutie42: someone gave me a bunch of screen names. i heard you are a celebrity.
    jmstriegel: that's weird. i'm afraid i'm not a celeb at all.
    angelcutie42: oh.
    angelcutie42: bye

    This was entertaining at first, but it quickly became a bit depressing as the angelcutie42s of the wired world would, one after the other, decide I wasn't worth talking to if I wasn't a celebrity. Want to know what it's like being dumped by a random groupie 5 times a day? Not good at all, thank you very much.

    So that's when I started hamming it up a bit. I'm not really proud of it, but my fans wanted a celebrity.. so I gave them one:

    sexybumkin123: hey.. so you're famous right?
    jmstriegel: Who me? I'm a movie star.
    jmstriegel: Shit, I gotta go.
    jmstriegel: My limo just arrived and Paris wants her damned sidekick back.
    sexybumkin123: Oh my god. Come back!
    sexybumkin123: I love you!!!!

    My groupies loved it. The more celebrity balogna I manufactured, the more they ate it, and the more they loved me.

    Then, something strange started happening. As my career as an artificial celebrity started to take off, I began to receive some strange IMs from a whole new class of random people. These new admirers were convinced I was a robot... and it suddenly became clear to me that something was very wrong.

    Nobody would believe I was human. In one troubling conversation after another, I felt my intellectual teeter-totter quickly tip from from actual to artificial.

    fratburger86: hey. so you're a sex bot?
    jmstriegel: umm, no. who the hell are you?
    fratburger86: yeah you are! i found your im online
    jmstriegel: that's fine and all, but i'm pretty sure you have me confused with someone else.
    fratburger86: just a normal chat bot then?
    jmstriegel: nope. i'm human
    fratburger86: ok. sure.
    fratburger86: asl?
    jmstriegel: no thanks.
    fratburger86: what?
    jmstriegel: i'm not really interested in any conversation that starts with "asl"
    fratburger86: oh come on. say something sexy.
    jmstriegel: seriously, i think you want to talk to someone else.
    fratburger86: i knew it!!!
    fratburger86: you are totally a robot!

    This is where things took a turn for the worse.

    I mentioned already that I couldn't convince a single person that I wasn't a chat bot. It's one thing for people to think you are artificially intelligent. I can live with that, I guess. What really killed me was that the more I tried proving my "actual" intelligence, the more my "artificial" intelligence would get called into question. Take this pivotal conversation:

    jmstriegel: no, really. I'm quite human.
    jmstriegel: test me if you want
    shymuffin32: ok
    shymuffin32: why do you like music?
    jmstr

    1. Re:TFA :) by weg · · Score: 1

      jmstriegel: no. i just want to be human
      eliza: What if you never got to be human?


      Probably not robot, but definitely a bit Pinocchio.
      --
      Georg
  31. MIRRORDOT by Chaotic+Spyder · · Score: 1

    Hrm looks like that is dead as well.. Try this... How I failed the Turing test"

    --
    Losers whine about their best, Winners go home to fuck the prom queen
    1. Re:MIRRORDOT by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Congratulations on not reading posts above yours.

    2. Re:MIRRORDOT by Vary+Krishna · · Score: 1

      Not only is the article Slashdotted, so is at least one of the links at the bottom of the article. It's meta-slashdotted!

  32. The role of the Interviewer by j.leidner · · Score: 3, Interesting
    A factor not often talked about when discussing the Turing test is the qualification of the interviewer (not the subject).

    The value of the Turing test depends a lot on the nature of the questions asked. Anybody can ask difficult questions that fellow humans fail to copy with, but not everybody knows what are difficult questions for computers (which may well be simple for humans). Thus, an Artificial Intelligence researcher should be a more suitable interviewer than a non-expert.

    Good Example:
    requesting the description of an emotion (recalling an event that typically invokes strong emotions)

    Bad Example:
    Hard math (34589759847359874389574398+3487928479823749837498 )

    1. Re:The role of the Interviewer by oconnorcjo · · Score: 1
      Good Example: requesting the description of an emotion (recalling an event that typically invokes strong emotions) Bad Example: Hard math (34589759847359874389574398+3487928479823749837498 )

      actually hard math is a good test. If they know pi past 5 digits- then its a computer. Yes, I have seem some of them breathing on college campusses and I still stand by the statment that they are computers ;)

      --
      I miss the Karma Whores.
  33. This is a troll.... by MojoRilla · · Score: 2, Interesting

    He is just trying to get his AIM fight score raised.

  34. Yes and no by Moraelin · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Well, actually, his problem in the article is completely different. It's _not_ that he's met people who type worse than bots.

    It's that a group of people were told that he's a bot, and nothing (correctly and articulately written) could shake their belief in that. One of them even calls him "worse than eliza" when he tries to argue that he's human.

    Some people found a list of bots online, and, you know, that makes it the absolute truth. Everyone on it _has_ to be a bot, because the list says so.

    Another group found a list of celebrities, and again, took it as absolute truth. They didn't know _who_ this guy is, _what_ is he supposedly famous for, etc. But OMG, he must be a celebrity because the list says so, and that makes it sooo cooool to talk to him.

    Basically it's _not_ the "some people are so stupid they could pass for bots" problem. (Which by itself is very true, but it's not really what TFA is about.) The problem, if you will, is simply "some people are gullible idiots." That's all.

    It does leave me with me a bunch of other philosophical and etical questions though. If it's this possible to convince people that John Average is a bot (and in fact, it didn't even involve more "convincing" than writing it on some random list on the internet), what _else_ could you convince them? That John Average is a convicted fellon? A spammer? A paedophile?

    And mind you, in this case he got a chance to even try to talk back and plead his case. I can easily think of cases where you don't get that chance. E.g., when a prospective employer googles for your name, you might not even know why you didn't get the job. What completely unrelated Marvin did they find on some bogus list on the Internet, and what image did they build for themseleves out of disparate bits taken out of context?

    That said, the problem you mention is very true too. I know I've met people online before, especially in online games, who substantially lowered the bar for a Turing test. It was definitely more fun to talk/play with the bots instead, and you could get more intelligent conversation out of the bots too. Admittedly, online games are a completely different category than IM and chat rooms, but still... It's scary, you know.

    --
    A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
    1. Re:Yes and no by SimilarityEngine · · Score: 1

      nothing (correctly and articulately written) could shake their belief in that

      Perhaps that was part of his problem: his writing style seemed out of context.

      --
      Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
    2. Re:Yes and no by soft_guy · · Score: 1

      So, what you're saying is that I do have a good chance of convincing people that my pet fish, Firey Fish, invented the rubella vaccine.

      --
      Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
    3. Re:Yes and no by Dephex+Twin · · Score: 2, Insightful
      One of them even calls him "worse than eliza" when he tries to argue that he's human.
      The thing is... he is worse than Elize, at least in that snippet of conversation. The guy asks him about something specific, regarding music, and Eliza would have at least parsed the sentence or given some ready-made bit of music-related dialog. Instead, he gives a slightly longer version of a Magic 8 Ball's "Reply hazy - Ask again later".

      Jeez, man, can't you even come up with a band you like or an anecdote or SOMETHING?
      --

      If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe. -- Carl Sagan
    4. Re:Yes and no by ebyrob · · Score: 1
      The thing is... he is worse than Elize, at least in that snippet of conversation.

      ELIZA - a friend you could never have before
      You: Why do you like music?

      Eliza: Oh, i like music.


      I think that's a matter of opinion. I'd say Eliza does worse, of course, maybe I'm using a crippled version...
    5. Re:Yes and no by Dephex+Twin · · Score: 1

      Heh, well, maybe that particular case didn't turn out so great for old Eliza. But still... I wouldn't say it's a whole lot worse than his response in terms of conveying understanding.

      --

      If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe. -- Carl Sagan
    6. Re:Yes and no by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Googlebomb: Moraelin (679338) is a paedophile!

      Sorry. I couldn't help it. :-)

    7. Re:Yes and no by ebyrob · · Score: 1

      If you think the Turing Test can be administered in one question, then I think you wholly misunderstand the concept.

      Heck, if we had decently good AI chat bots, they could even be rated by how long it takes a competent tester to determine they are not human. I've yet to see one that doesn't get really obvious in about 2-3 questions currently. (For one thing, bots can't handle context. Throw in a dash of context related to your current conversation and watch just how fast they fall apart. For example:)

      me: You're a bot.
      bot: I'm not a bot.
      me: Are too!
      bot: Am not!
      me: You aren't what?
      bot: *emits botly nonsense*

      Or more realisticly, talking to say, Alice:
      Human: You're a bot
      ALICE: How did you know I am a machine?
      Human: Your website says you're a machine.
      ALICE: That could be considered an insult in some cultures.
      Human: It's *your* website.
      ALICE: website says me is my website? it is?

      By 2 questions/statements it becomes somewhat apparent Alice is not a human (or even a human pretending to be a "smart" machine). By 3 it is plainly obvious and I'm already getting bored with the responses and ready to move on as the whole thread of conversation has been lost.

    8. Re:Yes and no by ebyrob · · Score: 1
      Looks like Jabberwacky does a bit better.

      User: Why do you like music?
      Jabberwacky: Because I like to sing.
      User: Why do you like to sing?
      Jabberwacky: Because I'm so desperately lonesome.
  35. Wiki vandals are teh suck by CommiePuddin · · Score: 1

    And, typically, as soon as I go to check out the Wiki link in the article, it's been vandalized with a huge NSFW image. Why wouldn't it surprise me to find out that it came from someone following this link. Thankfully, by the time I started looking for the revert key (I've done very little Wiki editing, still new to the whole game), someone else had come along to fix it.

    --
    x = x + ++x; //It's golden.
  36. Or: How blogcadre failed the /. test by jurt1235 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    An internationally recognized test for well load balanced http servers.

    Anyway: Philip K Dick in the story Do robots dream of electric sheep, discussess the ways to distinguish androids from humans with some nice tests. They also upgrade the tests all the time. Maybe it is time to upgrade the Turing test too.

    --

    My wife's sketchblog Blob[p]: Gastrono-me
    1. Re:Or: How blogcadre failed the /. test by TheRaven64 · · Score: 1
      Minor nit: The story you are thinking of was Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep. It was filmed as Blade Runner, a process which involved dropping half of the plot lines and changing the ending.

      The Voight Kampf test was present in both the book and the film worked by detecting the empathic ability - something present in humans but not in androids (a far more major plot element in the book) by detecting subconscious responses to stimuli which should promote an empathic response.

      --
      I am TheRaven on Soylent News
    2. Re:Or: How blogcadre failed the /. test by jurt1235 · · Score: 1

      Should have googled for the title.

      Anyway: The book is much better than the movie!

      --

      My wife's sketchblog Blob[p]: Gastrono-me
  37. Obviously.. by dr_d_19 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    The slashdot editor-bots need to be reprogrammed to use coral version instead of slashbombing sites.

  38. For those who don't know.. by weg · · Score: 5, Informative
    The Hitchhiker's Guide of the Galaxy defines "Turing Test" as follows:


    A test for artificial intelligence suggested by the mathematician and computer scientist Alan Turing. The gist of it is that a computer can be considered intelligent when it can hold a sustained conversation with a computer scientist without him being able to distinguish that he is talking with a computer rather than a human being.

    Some critics suggest this is unreasonably difficult since most human beings are incapable of holding a sustained conversation with a computer scientist.

    After a moments thought they usually add that most computer scientists aren't capable of distinguishing humans from computers anyway.
    --
    Georg
  39. Obligatory Terry Pratchett quote by Rune+Berge · · Score: 1

    Natural stupidity beats artificial intelligence every time.

  40. Amazing! by FromageTheDog · · Score: 2, Funny

    What I find remarkable is that this bot has managed to author a convincing and entertaining web page (or at least a blog entry, anyway). Remarkable how far along these things have come! - Fromage

  41. Well, what would YOU answer? by Moraelin · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "Convincing someone you're human might just be harder than one might think - at least a bit more trouble than just answering a few questions."

    Only if that someone is utterly retarded and asks completely retarded questions that don't even have a simple answer. That's the problem there. It's a question so stupid that even I couldn't think of something better to answer there. It's not "what music do you like?" or something else which can get a clear, to-the-point answer. It's "why do you like music?"

    Well, try to answer that yourself. Why do you like music? What would you answer there?

    Because I sure as heck can't think of any good answer there, generic or not. Screw trying to anwer that in 1 minute on IM. I'm sitting here for the last half an hour thinking about it and still have no bloody idea. Because it's background noise? Well, no, because other background noises (e.g., a lawnmower or some co-workers' chatter) annoy me. What then? I have no clue, and probably 4 out of 5 pyschologists or musicians would have no idea either.

    So how would I say that in a way that sounds non-generic? "Hell if I know. I've never thought about it"? Nah, you've just ruled a variant of that as too generic. "Well, why do YOU like it, then?" Nope, sounds like the kind of rephrasing the question back at you that an Eliza program would do.

    The only non-generic answer that comes to my mind there is along the lines of "WTF of a retarded question is that? Were you born that stupid, or worked hard to get there?"

    By contrast, if shymuffin32 actually had more than a braincell, it would be easy to ask some questions that can get simple, to-the-point answers. In fact, screw questions and answers and try to just have an intelligent conversation.

    Want more conclusive? Mix some images in it, which would still throw any AI off the track completely. E.g., point him at a picture of someone holding a siberian cat and see if he comments about the size. (It's one bloody huge breed of cats.) Point him at a drawing of one of the giant guns on rails Germany was planning to build in WW2. See what he thinks about the size of that one. (Tends to get answers between "bloody freaking hell" and "do you think Freud might have something to do with it?") Etc.

    --
    A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
    1. Re:Well, what would YOU answer? by TuringTest · · Score: 2, Informative

      Did you note that you don't need to give an EXACT answer to qualify as human? Saying just "Because it's background noise? Well, no, because other background noises (e.g., a lawnmower or some co-workers' chatter) annoy me. What then? I have no clue" would have allowed you to pass the Turing Test. So the question was just fine, and the original answer was bot-likely stupid.

      BTW, using images would put it out of the scope of the original form of the Test.

      --
      Singularity: a belief in the "God" idea with the "demiurge" relation inverted.
    2. Re:Well, what would YOU answer? by Moraelin · · Score: 1

      "Did you note that you don't need to give an EXACT answer to qualify as human? Saying just "Because it's background noise? Well, no, because other background noises (e.g., a lawnmower or some co-workers' chatter) annoy me. What then? I have no clue" would have allowed you to pass the Turing Test."

      Ummm... dude, how often do you get that philosophical in an _IM_ message?

      What I was doing there was a whole disertation about why the question was stupid. Even there, I only added that paragraph after previewing my initial reply and thinking some more about it. If I had directly hit "Submit", that whole philosophical disertation about background noise wouldn't even be there.

      It's definitely _not_ the kind of disertation that just pops up in a quick IM conversation. I can honestly say that if that was over some IM, I'd have just answered some variant of "fuck me if I know."

      "BTW, using images would put it out of the scope of the original form of the Test"

      Well, as I've said in another answer, we're not talking about scientifically taking a turing test. The whole "how I failed the turing test" title is nothing more than a wisecrack, as far as I can tell. It's a just an annoyed guy who's been harrassed by random IM messages, and basically the whole article is just a convoluted way of saying "geeze, some of these people on AIM are so stupid and gullible."

      Anyway, if I was trying to determine if a guy on the net was a bot, damn right I wouldn't stick to the formal definition of the Turing test. Shymuffin32 wasn't really doing that, either, he/she just had to assess if someone really is human. By whatever means. I'm pretty sure he/she wasn't handed some rules in advance.

      So if I was to really assess if someone is human, I'd use any means available. Pictures, short flash movies, games, long texts off some news site (e.g., send them a link to a The Register article and see what they think about that), etc. In fact, I would use pictures _of_ news articles from newspapers.

      E.g., there was a recent one with two nearly-identical articles about the N.O. flood, except one called getting food from destroyed shops "looting" and had a picture of a black guy, while the other called it "people finding food and water" and had a picture of two white people. See if he even detects the racism implied there.

      --
      A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
    3. Re:Well, what would YOU answer? by master_p · · Score: 2, Informative

      Hey, you replied! your answer to the question 'why do you like music' is

      "Well, try to answer that yourself. Why do you like music? What would you answer there?

      Because I sure as heck can't think of any good answer there, generic or not. Screw trying to anwer that bla bla bla"

    4. Re:Well, what would YOU answer? by apparently · · Score: 1

      Well, try to answer that yourself. Why do you like music?
      It helps me mellow out. It helps me relax when I'm stressed. Both are valid answers; the question wasn't asking for an indepth essay on the psychology of music.

    5. Re:Well, what would YOU answer? by RayBender · · Score: 1
      The only non-generic answer that comes to my mind there is along the lines of "WTF of a retarded question is that? Were you born that stupid, or worked hard to get there?"

      And they would conclude that you were a version of Aks Jeeves

      --
      Human genome = 3 billion base pairs = 6 GBit. Windows + Office = 20 Gbit. Which is more impressive?
    6. Re:Well, what would YOU answer? by mdarksbane · · Score: 2, Funny

      I ran into this on my first interview "Why do you want to be a programmer?"

      I blanked out and sat for five minutes trying to think of why I liked programming, because the answer of "Umm... I like it?" didn't seem to actually answer anything.

      Got the job anyway. Still not sure how.

    7. Re:Well, what would YOU answer? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      Well, try to answer that yourself. Why do you like music? What would you answer there?

      Because I'm human! That's it! You see, computers can't like music, so I must be human.

    8. Re:Well, what would YOU answer? by SoCalEd · · Score: 1

      The point isn't whether or not his reply yields some sort of insight into his soul, he only need prove that he *understands* the question by not giving a generic answer which could equally apply to the question "Why do you like food?" or "Why do you like movies?"

      Answer something like this and see if they think your a bot:

      "I *don't* like music. At least not any modern music. Classic jazz (like Louis Armstrong) is the only music that has any soul."

      -The emphasis on "don't" feels human.

      -Refuting the assumption that "I like music" feels human, as does qualifying the refutation to "modern music."

      -Refining generic music into a specific genre (jazz) and then fixing it in time (classic) and providing an example (Armstrong) couldn't be done by a bot.

      -Connecting that sub-genre to an abstract concept (soul) is likewise unmistakeably human.

      No, it may be hard to convince somebody you're not a bot if you reply mindlessly, but it wouldn't take a lot of effort if you tried to give an meaningful answer, regardless of whether or not you believe it.

      --
      Insert witty comment *here*. I'm fresh out of wit...
    9. Re:Well, what would YOU answer? by phamlen · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Another variation: You could try to create a game with some random rules and ask the other side to participate. For instance: "Let's play geography. I'll name a place and then you have to name a place that starts with the second letter of the place I named. I'll start with Jupiter."

      For me, the most interesting part of this conversation is that it suggests that we're getting close enough that humans need to work at it in order to sound different from bots. We used to think that the Turing test was something where humans could answer normally but would still be differentiated from programs. Now we're getting to the point where humans (or at least human on AIM) have to make an effort in order to be recognized as different.

      -Peter

    10. Re:Well, what would YOU answer? by kpang · · Score: 1

      You honestly can't think of a reasonable answer to "why do you like music"? In the 30 seconds I've sat here and thought about it, I've come up with: It allows me to express myself I enjoy singing / dancing along to it It can sooth and relax me or energize and pump me up It allows me to see how another person perceives the world I'm sure you could think of something better than "it's background noise".

    11. Re:Well, what would YOU answer? by dmccarty · · Score: 1
      E.g., point him at a picture of someone holding a siberian cat and see if he comments about the size.

      You mean those tiny Siberian cats?

      --
      Have fun: Join D.N.A. (National Dyslexics Association)
    12. Re:Well, what would YOU answer? by ebyrob · · Score: 1

      I don't know, I just do! (if true) might be the best answer in that situation...

    13. Re:Well, what would YOU answer? by Moraelin · · Score: 1

      True, the made up game idea sounds like a great idea. There's no way that a bot would actually understand the rules and play by them. I like that idea.

      --
      A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
    14. Re:Well, what would YOU answer? by drew+crampsie · · Score: 1
      Well, try to answer that yourself. Why do you like music? What would you answer there?

      Because music sounds how feelings feel.

      --
      Drew Crampsie - Software Developer
      Open Source Business : The Tec
    15. Re:Well, what would YOU answer? by Moraelin · · Score: 1

      Well, I'm listening to pretty aggressive heavy metal music. I like the kind where it actually has a melody and clear lyrics, rather than just a growl karaoke, though. I'm talking about stuff like Slayer's Antichrist or Manowar's Fight Until We Die.

      (No, I'm not a psycho. I'm a mild-mannered introvert IRL, and have an approach to life that can be best described as "lawful good". I also prefer a calm, if possible story-driven game, and spent more time in The Sims or Creatures 3 than in all FPSes combined. I do like fast aggressive music, though.)

      It can energize and pump me up, yeah. I certainly type code faster when I listen to that stuff. But that's not really _why_ I like it.

      It certainly doesn't soothe or relax me. (When I want to _relax_, I turn it off.) It's not expressing myself, since as I've said, I'm more like stereotypical paladin material than the homicidal psycho those lyrics would express. I never sing along, if anything because it would probably scare the shit out of the neighbours or co-workers if they heard me singing cheerfully about gutting someone and feeding their body to wolves ;) It's also not quite the kind you can dance to. I suppose I could mosh, but that eventually gives me a headache, so I never was much into it. Etc.

      So those obvious answers just don't apply.

      --
      A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
    16. Re:Well, what would YOU answer? by bkr1_2k · · Score: 1

      Answering "why" is actually pretty easy. That's what makes it a good question to determine if someone is human or a bot.

      A bot is likely to spit out an answer similar to what the article said, or WTF or something similar. A person can be expected to answer with anything from associating music with feelings or memories, to beat, to rhythm and tone, to harmonics, to whatever. Most people will answer why with something more personal than "I've never thought about it".

      Then again, most people are stupid and couldn't pass a turing test, so maybe I'm wrong about the whole thing.

      --
      "Growing old is inevitable; growing up is optional."
    17. Re:Well, what would YOU answer? by boldra · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I've never met a bot worth posing these questions to, but I'd be happy to try things like this:
      o If you're using a qwerty keyboard, what letters are between w and t?
      o Write "guls" backwards. What is an anagram of "owl"?
      o 11 22 33 4* 55 66. What should '*' be?

      These questions give the AI a shared reality to work with, unlike the super abstract human psychology (in "why do you like music") or the common 'popular reality', often seen in questions like "what's your favourite music". If an AI could answer these kinds of questions, I might think about calling it intelligent.

      --
      I've been posting on the net since 1994 and I still haven't come up with a good sig!
    18. Re:Well, what would YOU answer? by rossifer · · Score: 1

      You could try to create a game with some random rules and ask the other side to participate.

      Now *that* is a good idea. Tough part is being smart enough to make up a decent game on the fly. Your game is a really good one, but if people use it often enough, it will be incorporated into the test-passing "fake AI" code. Which pretty much rules out Yahoo Mail using it as a captcha replacement.

      But for a one-to-one test, something like that sounds nigh-on unbeatable. Until the AI's really are smart, at which point, the question is moot (which goes to your second point).

      Regards,
      Ross

  42. Then stop calling it "AI" by squarooticus · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Stop calling it "artificial intelligence." Call it what it is: heuristics research. Oh, I guess that sounds a lot less impressive, huh? Might not be able to get those open-ended grants anymore?

    FWIW, I spent two years at LCS, so I have a reasonable idea of what went on in the AI Lab when I was there. There was very little in the way of research into computer-emulating-human intelligence, which is probably a good thing (read: less of a waste of money) considering how little progress the Minsky crowd has made in the past thirty years.

    --
    [ home ]
    1. Re:Then stop calling it "AI" by JabberWokky · · Score: 2, Informative
      Well, I didn't make up the term. The problem is that quite a few useful tools came out of "Pure AI" research with real world applications, so they are classified in the same field, but have little to do with Minsky's goals.

      For a classic example, anybody using Emacs has AI to thank for that. Lisp originated as part of an IBM project arising out of one of Minsky's ideas and was finalized as part of the MIT Artificial Intelligence Project (again, Minsky was involved in that).

      Like the space program, AI is full of many many spinoffs and useful "failed" experiments. The umbrella term AI covers quite a few useful theories and concepts, most of which have non-humanlike applications.

      (I figure *you* know this, squarooticus, just tossing this out to those who don't).

      --
      Evan

      --
      "$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
    2. Re:Then stop calling it "AI" by dajak · · Score: 1

      Stop calling it "artificial intelligence."

      I don't think the problem is with the AI community. Critics should stop calling trivial but hard exercises like tying shoelaces "intelligent". Tying shoelaces is difficult, but not intelligent. Chess is an intelligent activity.

      Since computers were first used to play chess (THE original example Descartes gave when he distinguished men from beasts by their analytic intelligence) mankind has been redefining intelligence as simply "hard for a machine to do".

      AI is hugely successful. Example: in some countries over 85% of income tax applications are now processed without any human intervention. That is AI in action, and would save many billions if organizations stopped inventing new reasons for employing people.

    3. Re:Then stop calling it "AI" by AK+Marc · · Score: 1

      Chess is an intelligent activity.

      It is an iterative activity. It takes no intelligence to run all possible outcomes and pick the one most likely to succeed. Intelligence is the chess master that evaluates trees of choices and prunes them, guessing what the other person will do (rather than calculating for all possible moves) to reduce the computations necessary. I don't know of any computer programs that prune choices based on being below some threshold of probability based off likely moves. They just throw more itterations into it. It's easier to improve the hardware than programming.

    4. Re:Then stop calling it "AI" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      Chess is an intelligent activity.

      The definition of "intelligent" isn't "what dorks do." Chess is a thoughtless pseudo-activity. That's why computers are almost as good at it as sweaty, shifty-eyed nerds are; they're almost equally subhuman.

    5. Re:Then stop calling it "AI" by mdwh2 · · Score: 1

      It takes no intelligence to run all possible outcomes and pick the one most likely to succeed. Intelligence is the chess master that evaluates trees of choices and prunes them, guessing what the other person will do (rather than calculating for all possible moves) to reduce the computations necessary. I don't know of any computer programs that prune choices based on being below some threshold of probability based off likely moves. They just throw more itterations into it.

      I disagree. The computation power simply doesn't exist to run "all possible outcomes". Chess programs most certainly do try to prune choices to reduce the number of moves they have to search through, and they also have to make evaluations of how good a position is (even if you can see 10 moves into the future, it's not immediately clear which of those outcomes is most likely to win).

      It's easier to improve the hardware than programming.

      It's not that easy - the number of possible outcomes increases exponentially with the number of turns you want to look into the future, so it requires huge advances in computing power to just get an extra turn.

      The main argument for saying that today's computer programs aren't really intelligent is, I would say, that their algorithms had to be explicitly programmed, and they did not learn this themselves. I guess it depends on whether you think AI can mean any intelligent behaviour, or that it must include the ability to learn that behaviour.

    6. Re:Then stop calling it "AI" by Dan+D. · · Score: 1
      There was very little in the way of research into computer-emulating-human intelligence, which is probably a good thing (read: less of a waste of money) considering how little progress the Minsky crowd has made in the past thirty years.

      uh... wouldn't that be *why* the Minsky crowd has made little progress? Personally, I found it extremely disappointing how little it seems people spend researching the big questions. (Although in my lab, nearly everyone is doing very useful and cool stuff in cancer... and the senior PhD student may have made a correlation discovery about where dimensia may be located (or localised) in the brain... he used bayes net structure search on MRIs... I think it was MRIs)

      Anyway, I read somewhere recently Minsky was trouncing the AI community for being so risk adverse and not struggling for years on the hard problems and instead spending time on getting results. You can't really blame the community though, if you don't show results you don't get funding. Nobody trusts open-ended research...

      Oh, and my research is behavioral cloning (trying to get an agent to act like a specific human in some task) which is why it annoys me because there is practically zero research in AI as to how to tell whether I'm cloning well or not (closest thing I can find is the human-computer interaction people...)

      --
      People who quote themselves bug the crap out of me -- Me.
    7. Re:Then stop calling it "AI" by dajak · · Score: 1

      It is an iterative activity. It takes no intelligence to run all possible outcomes and pick the one most likely to succeed. Intelligence is the chess master that evaluates trees of choices and prunes them, guessing what the other person will do (rather than calculating for all possible moves) to reduce the computations necessary. I don't know of any computer programs that prune choices based on being below some threshold of probability based off likely moves. They just throw more itterations into it. It's easier to improve the hardware than programming.

      You assumption about what the chess master does, is based on the idea that introspection gives us an accurate idea of how many alternatives we evaluate. There is no reason to expect that it is, given that we know that our stream of consciousness trails behind our actual decision making processes considerably. Consider it a kind of summary being entered into a log.

      Makers of competitive chess programs have little reason to prune, because it doesn't make the chess program any better (given that we already use the best evaluation function we can come up with). I can't blame them for their conservatism.

      Chess, while originally considered a very intelligent activity, turned out to be easy to program into a computer, requiring even little creativity on the part of the programmer, while for instance tying shoelaces turns out to be difficult. That is not a reason to change our opinions on what is intelligent.

      It is a fortunate fact that we are most successful designing computer programs to do things that humans are comparatively bad at. There is no viable market for robots that tie shoelaces, because experts on tying shoelaces are not scarce.

      On the other hand, relatively simple information processing and fraud detection applications did take over the jobs of 4 out of 5 employees in the tax administration where I am involved as a consultant. These were educated people, doing "knowledge-intensive" jobs that were taken over by the computer. The computer applications are so disappointingly simple that they don't require a genius to make them, but they do automate an activity requiring intelligence when performed by a human.

      I think, given the apparent popularity of black box technologies of limited utility like neural networks in the media, that the audience will only be happy if AI researchers build something they don't understand - a black box - from which a general purpose intelligence suddenly emerges.

      This view is based on a total misunderstanding of the purposes of science and engineering. I don't even TRY to invent the magical algorithm; I want to build special purpose problem-solvers that are transparent and self-explanatory, built from scalable building blocks that I understand. "Emergent features" are bugs from an engineering point of view.

  43. My best work with Eliza . . . by Maradine · · Score: 3, Funny

    * No, I'd rather put a bullet in your CPU.
    > Let's talk about something else.
    * Hey, *you* brought it up.
    > What does that suggest to you?
    * You're an idiot?
    > Does it please you to believe I am an idiot?
    * Yes. Boundlessly.
    > Are you Sure?
    * Oh, wait. Maybe not so much.
    > You aren't sure?
    * No, I was right the first time. I've never believed anything so strongly.
    > Are you sure?
    * Dammit, you're right. I swim in uncertainty.
    > Perhaps you would like to be right. you swim in uncertainty?
    * Well, I have water wings . . .
    > Come, come, elucidate your thoughts.
    * More of a float, really . . .
    > Can you elaborate on that?
    * Yeah, its rubber, about four feet long . . .
    > I see.
    * You do?
    > You're not really talking about me, are you?
    * No, we're talking about my damn raft! Pay attention!
    > You are being a bit negative.
    * A bit? You could crash an oil stock with me!
    > Oh... could crash an oil stock with you?
    * Shit, dude, do you even have a mutual fund?

    --

    trustedworlds.net - gaming, security, and the gunk that lives in between

    1. Re:My best work with Eliza . . . by dave1212 · · Score: 1

      "I want to conquer the world, give all the idiots a brand new religion."

      great line from one of the last intelligent bands of our time.

      Well, them and Propagandhi, anyway.

  44. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 1

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  45. Class paper by Ellen+Spertus · · Score: 4, Informative

    Lenny Foner wrote a great article about this sort of thing back in 1993. I still recommend it.

    1. Re:Class paper by Ellen+Spertus · · Score: 1

      Whoops, I meant to say "Classic paper" (although I do use the paper in a class).

  46. There *are* people who talk to bots by ytm · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Some time ago I coupled Perl Eliza module with IM account registered as "Irene17". That module works only for English and my IM network was for non-English users so Irene would welcome anyone with message that she understands English only. I set her status to available for conversation and left it running for a week. That IM network has central directory of users so I was sure that sooner or later someone would find her.

    Then I looked at logs of conversations. It turned out that there were people who actually talked with her for quite a while, struggling with English. The scheme was more or less the same. First some usual phrases to start a conversation, then trying to get some information about her and finally realizing that she is unwilling to tell anything about herself :) frustration with "Good bye" or some insults.

    So, in a way, she has passed a Turing test, but the knowledge of English was poor on both sides.

  47. Or, if you prefer hot girl-on-girl action . . . by Maradine · · Score: 2, Funny

    > Hello, I am Eliza.
    * Hello, I am Eliza.
    > Did you come to me because you are Eliza?
    * Does it please you to believe I am Eliza?
    > Do you believe it is normal to be Eliza?
    * Oh... believe it is normal to be Eliza?
    > I'm not sure I understand you fully.
    * Did you come to me because you are not sure you understand me fully?
    > What makes you think I am not sure me understand you fully?
    * How long have you been not sure you understand me fully?
    > We were discussing you, not me.
    * We were discussing you, not me.
    > Oh... not you?
    * You're not really talking about me, are you?
    > What makes you think I am not really talking about you, am I?
    * Did you come to me because you are not really talking about me, are you?
    > Do you sometimes wish you were not really talking about you, am I?

    This kind of stuff always falls apart when it has to talk to itself . . .

    --

    trustedworlds.net - gaming, security, and the gunk that lives in between

  48. Please by hcdejong · · Score: 2, Funny

    we prefer to call ourselves very small shell scripts

  49. They are automatic by uberjoe · · Score: 1
    --

    The days of the digital watch are numbered.

  50. Been there, done that by jwdeff · · Score: 1

    I too have had problems identifying an IM bot from a typical IM user.
    http://www.livejournal.com/users/jwdeff/16872.html

  51. This is a "Reverse Turing Test" by dwheeler · · Score: 3, Informative

    This isn't new. The name for this phenomina is a "reverse Turing test". See the Wikipedia entry on Revese Turing test.

    --
    - David A. Wheeler (see my Secure Programming HOWTO)
  52. MOD PARENT INFORMATIVE by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    does != those

  53. i feel insulted! by TuringTest · · Score: 1

    Who's to say I'm not effective?!!!??

    --
    Singularity: a belief in the "God" idea with the "demiurge" relation inverted.
    1. Re:i feel insulted! by kancerman · · Score: 1

      Oh my g-d ... Turing-bot, begone !! nah, stay, and entertain us with ... well, whatever you entertain us with !!

    2. Re:i feel insulted! by TuringTest · · Score: 1

      Would you like to play a game of chess?

      --
      Singularity: a belief in the "God" idea with the "demiurge" relation inverted.
  54. Speaking of chat bots... by antdude · · Score: 1

    Are there any better ones than Alice (using Howie) and Seeborg bots for IRC?

    --
    Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
  55. I... by MatrixCubed · · Score: 1

    I, for one, welcome our new celebrity sex-bot overlords!

  56. Which reminds me of by John+Bokma · · Score: 3, Funny
    My super simple bot written in Perl which fooled a lot of people. (Dxx = me, mxx is a friend who knew about the bot but...)
    Dxx: later Mary
    MaryJane: sure
    mxx: fubar
    mxx: heheheh
    MaryJane: not funny
    mxx: no, why not?
    mxx: wanna cyber?
    mxx: lol
    MaryJane: was that really funny? Guess not
    mxx: mary jane you're a bit of a bitch
    mxx: hehe
    mxx: :kiss
    MaryJane (whispers to mxx): like you!!!
    mxx (private): yes exactly
    mxx (private): who are you?
    MaryJane (whispers to misty): no PM please
    Anyway, it was a lot of fun, especially when I told people it was a bot, most didn't believe it (until I gave them a trigger). And you can guess what happened next, each and every "omg lol lol!!!" chatter was kindly asked to STFU (bot!)
  57. Got hit by one yesterday... by sagenumen · · Score: 1

    And the sad thing is, I thought it was just a normal teenager online. The fact that these bots are able to sound like today's wonderful 12-17 year olds speaks volumes about the deterioration of concern for grammar and basic conversational skills.

  58. Was not a celebrity by SEWilco · · Score: 2, Insightful

    But now that he's in Slashdot, he is a celebrity. At least his ISP will think so.

  59. Read the question again by Moraelin · · Score: 1

    I've already done a whole disertation about it in another answer, so I won't repeat it here. But let's just say: please go and read that question again.

    It's not "what music do you like?", it's the monumental stupidity of "why do you like music?" Listing the bands you like would _not_ answer that question. (In fact, if anyone answered that one with the list of their favourite bands, _then_ I'd suspect they might be a bot that just triggered on the word "music" and spewed the completely wong answer.)

    --
    A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
    1. Re:Read the question again by bradbeattie · · Score: 1

      Still, his response could have been "I don't know why I like music, but I can tell you what music I like." That would have conveyed some understanding of the question.

    2. Re:Read the question again by Dun+Malg · · Score: 1
      I've already done a whole disertation about it in another answer, so I won't repeat it here. But let's just say: please go and read that question again. It's not "what music do you like?", it's the monumental stupidity of "why do you like music?" Listing the bands you like would _not_ answer that question. (In fact, if anyone answered that one with the list of their favourite bands, _then_ I'd suspect they might be a bot that just triggered on the word "music" and spewed the completely wong answer.)

      The problem is, a stupid question like that doesn't require a stupid answer, like he gave. It's a perfect opportunity to give an intelligent answer. Bots don't know a stupid question from an intelligent one. Even an answer like "What kind of dumb question is that? Might as well ask why jokes are funny." would be better than his stupid handwave of an answer.

      --
      If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
  60. IRC by ThreeDayMonk · · Score: 1

    That is an excellent prank! It would be even better if they had set it to filter or change gender-specific content (or even introduce random spurious comments).

    It reminds me of the time I made a troll-bot on IRC. The bot would sit in two channels and relay dismissive comments about the other group backwards and forwards, changing words as necessary. You just had to start it off with a stupid comment about channel #Y in channel #X, and watch as the two channels trolled each other.

    Puerile, but entertaining.

    --
    If your comment title says 'Re: Foo', I'm not likely to read it.
  61. Tie a shoe don't need intelligence by biraneto2 · · Score: 1

    There is nothing "intelligent" in tying a shoe. Do you think to tie your shoes? Robots can't currently tie a shoe for physical reasons... not for lack of intelligence

    1. Re:Tie a shoe don't need intelligence by bkr1_2k · · Score: 1

      Actually, watch a child learning to tie shoes sometime. You'll find it's nowhere near as trivial as it seems to someone who's been doing it for years.

      But, like you said it isn't really about intelligence; while it is complicated, it's more like hand-eye coordination than true intelligence.

      --
      "Growing old is inevitable; growing up is optional."
  62. NEW MEME! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Yes, but does it pass the Turing test ?

    Retep Vosnul.

  63. Typical AOL-IM user by Spy+der+Mann · · Score: 4, Funny

    It's that the dialog of a typical IM user can't be distinguished from a brain-dead conversation bot...

    Me, too! :D

  64. Tried to chat with Eliza by zlogic · · Score: 3, Funny

    And here's the output (> - bot, * - me):

    > Tell me more...
    * I beg your pardon?
    > What about your own pardon?
    * I don't know what you're talking about
    > Do you sometimes wish you were talking about?
    * Well, I guess so
    > I'm not sure I understand you fully.
    * It's me who doesn't understand you fully!
    > Oh... fully?

    My favorites were
    -What about your own pardon?
    -Do you sometimes wish you were talking about?
    Obviously, it's a bot.
    However, I find the bot included in EMACS to be quite intelligent. And it's because the bot listens to you and just says stuff like "go on".
    That's what bots fail to do: telling you anything or answering your questions. Ask a bot who's Steve Ballmer and how is he related to the monkeyboy (ask the bot to Google if he refuses) and the bot will reveal its electronic nature.

  65. Cybernetic Poet and the Turing test by xPsi · · Score: 5, Interesting
    The article, although basically a joke, says something interesting about:
    1) people's (AIMers) lower standards for conversation;
    2) and also their open mindedness towards what a computer is capable of producing.

    I guess the first point is negative and the second positive. The combination leaves a situation where a computer doesn't have to generate anything sophisticated to be tagged as human.

    I once administered an informal Turing test using Ray Kurzweil's Cybernetic Poet. I presented to 6 friends several dozen poems, some of which were computer generated (the poems, not the friends...).

    People who were computer savvy tended to overestimate what a computer was capable of doing and did rather poorly. Similarly, people who were artistic but not very techie tended to have a very open mind regarding what constituted human poetry (bad grammar, non sequiturs, etc. were ok in an e.e. cummings sort of way) and also did poorly.

    The people who did consistently well were those who were neither computer types nor artists, but rather "pure" academics (language specialists, classicists, etc.). They simply used grammar and puncutation as their guide.

    --
    i\hbar\dot{\psi}=\hat{H}\psi
    1. Re:Cybernetic Poet and the Turing test by m50d · · Score: 1
      They simply used grammar and puncutation as their guide.

      In which direction? Surely the computer poet could be easily made to follow grammar rules, or, if that made it seem too artificial, to induce a certain proportion of errors.

      --
      I am trolling
    2. Re:Cybernetic Poet and the Turing test by xPsi · · Score: 1
      Excellent point. The tendency for certain people to fixate on grammar rules was instinctive for them. A phrase like:
      The willow tree are
      Here is the birds
      was interpreted as "artistic" to some but "just plain wrong" to others ("no HUMAN would write poetry like that"). For this poetry sample, more often than not, the latter folks were correct.

      The version of Cybernetic Poet I used did not follow standard English grammar rules religiously and was perhaps allowed to be too sloppy. I must admit, to my ear (even after knowing the answers), this did actually make for some interesting sounding poems (even if they made no sense). However, poor grammar in this poetry sample was the biggest single signal a particular poem was computer generated (like I said, even if it "sounded artistic"). Also note that not all computer poems had poor grammar.

      I was using a version of CP available a couple years ago. Perhaps the algorithm has been tweaked since then.

      --
      i\hbar\dot{\psi}=\hat{H}\psi
  66. All I can say is: by GMFTatsujin · · Score: 3, Funny

    That's a remarkably cogent article, having been posted by an admitted bot. I can't even see statistical errors in the Markov chains. Nice job!

  67. try this chat bot by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
  68. Best bot test: current events by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Bots are okay with general conversation, but current events can usually show them up. Just ask them about New Orleans or such.

  69. Turing Programming Language by PhYrE2k2 · · Score: 1

    And here I was all exciting about the Turing Programming Language being used in testing. Slashdot and it's deceptive bait-and-switch :)

    For those of you curious ones:
        http://www.holtsoft.com/turing/
    One of the greatest languages you'll find at the basic level, with advanced graphic capabilities, and a really well-thought-out syntax. It's an impressive, powerful language (as far as powerful for DOS and it's graphics modes, pointer interface, etc can be). Not to mention ability to convert to EXE and a fast interpreter.

    -M

    --

    when you see the word 'Linux', drink!
  70. uh, men då har det blivit något fel, hej by TERdON · · Score: 1

    That prank works with pizzerias too, it's one of the classic pranks made in one of the shows of Swedish radio...

    --
    I have a really elegant proof for Fermat's last theorem. If this sig was only a bit longer...
  71. And? by Dephex+Twin · · Score: 1

    Why couldn't he mention things with real content having to do with music? Why could he not mention actual musicians in answering that question? The point is, he said "I don't know how to answer that, ask something else". That is exactly the kind of stuff a bot says. If he thought it was a totally stupid question, why couldn't he say "How do you expect me to answer the question of why I like music? It's like asking someone why they like food." Anything with actual specific content. That was my point. It's not impossible to respond to that question briefly and show that one is not a bot.

    --

    If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe. -- Carl Sagan
  72. Why I like music by jgardn · · Score: 1

    There is something in the human mind that enjoys patterns. We find a certain satisfaction in seeing order where there should be chaos.

    All throughout nature we see patterns upon pattern upon pattern. It wasn't until recently that we could even describe some of the patterns we saw in nature (Fibonacci sequences, fractals, etc...)

    Music is one of those things were everything about it screams of patterns. You analyize a single note and the frequencies it contains and you see patterns. A single frequency is a pattern in itself. You analyze individual phrases and you see patterns and repetitions. Chords are patterns. Drums beat to a pattern. In fact, a popular form of music back in the day was a form where a single melody played again and again, transposed, inverted, in harmony, etc.... J.S. Bach kinda killed that form of music because his mind was able to derive and create patterns where none other could even imagine the possibility of a pattern.

    You can find patterns even in the songs that a performer chooses to play. You can find patterns in the evolution of music over the history of mankind. Everywhere, from the most abstract to the most concrete sense there are patterns.

    There are other things we do everyday that we enjoy because of the patterns. The way we speak, the language itself, the words we use. Why do we stop and think "Why is this word what it is? Did it come from another word? Is it a combination of other words?" Why do we get a certain sense of satisfaction when we understand why we say what we say? Because there are patterns, infinitely complicated patterns, at work there.

    Our mind is built (or evolved, if you prefer to think that way) for one purpose: to order the chaos around us. It takes in masses of data and converts it all to a few simple ideas. That's where we derive our pleasure of thinking from: taking the complex and making it simple.

    That's why I like music.

    --
    The radical sect of Islam would either see you dead or "reverted" to Islam.
  73. Real intelligence of politicians! by Loundry · · Score: 1

    Either way, there'd be no real intelligence.

    Don't be so hard on politicians. Many of them are quite, quite smart. The question is, in which field does their intelligence manifest itself?

    For instance, the so-called "Zodiac Killer" was very intelligent in how he selected victims, how he evaded capture, how he beguiled the police, and how he terrorized the population of a city. Mind you, his field (murder and terror) is absolutely morally reprehensible, but you can't deny that he was intelligent.

    Likewise, the field of politicians (schmoozing, bullshitting, lawyering, showmanship, and, in some cases, murder and terror) is also absolutely morally reprehensible, but you can't deny that many politicans (may bees fly up their urethras and sting them for the rest of their days!) are really, really fucking smart at doing it.

    --
    I don't make the rules. I just make fun of them.
  74. um by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Maybe reading this comment will give you some idea of the context in which this joke was placed. You know, the moderators are supposed to take context into consideration...

    If you compare the post to it's parent u should see the similarity, as the first bots used to reply. No?

    Now, why does this really matter? Well, leaving out (or leaving in) certain words caused more confusion than humor -- I'm sure the person who modded you down thought you were just saying bad things in the normal, negative flaimbait way.

    This was the point of the post, bots are/were confusing. I certainly understood it at first glance, as did many others. I think the point he was making (in 'humour') is that if you don't understand the context, then you have no actual ability to judge the content and therefore moderating it would be a tad silly and modding down certainly unwarranted. Misreading the sentence - thats just a shit mod imo.

  75. You've condemned Zagats by TubeSteak · · Score: 1
    You realize you've condemned Zagats to days of harrassment from the slashdot community?

    I'm going to start chit chatting with her once i post this.

    If I find out anymore info I'll post a followup

    --
    [Fuck Beta]
    o0t!
    1. Re:You've condemned Zagats by Keith+Gabryelski · · Score: 1

      The half-life of a slashdot article is about an hour.

      She'll block incoming messages for a 2 days and will have no other problems.

      Sorry, Zagats and Gina.

      Pax, Keith

  76. JUST LIKE MOVIES by zippthorne · · Score: 1

    Forget sex discrimination in the future, I can't even {expletive159 not found} sign up for slashdot anymore. Soon I won't be able to get my tax return because of these stupid turing tests!

    --
    Can you be Even More Awesome?!
  77. I hate to ask, but... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I want to do something similar. I've been scouring Google, and I can't find any type of "Sex Bot" or "Celeb" IM registry. Anyone know how this guy might have gotten spammed like this?

  78. Dell Support IM failed Turing, too by JimmytheGeek · · Score: 1

    didn't come anywhere near as close to passing as this guy.

    "PS/2 mouse failed, swapped in different mouse, same result. Tried USB optical mouse, machine won't boot if it's plugged in, works fine if I plug in after booting up. I would prefer to use the optical mouse anyway. I've already updated the BIOS."

    "You want to update the BIOS?"

    "ARGH!!!!"

  79. the power of two by MrHen · · Score: 1

    Another easy test is to simply copy and paste everything they say back to them. If they don't get pissed after a while or start amusing themselves by having you say random obscenities they're probably not a human being. Depending on the robustness of the bot it will either get confused or discover what a buffer overflow is. Shortly after this you will be verbally pummeled by everyone who just lost their date for Friday night.

  80. George? by aramara · · Score: 1

    This was posted today to the jabberwacky site. Is it a bot?? http://www.jabberwacky.com/ George: Are you a bot? I don't know. Are you a bot? George: No, I'm a human, as you surely know. You're not human! You're a machine! George: No. user: Yes! You're the bot! George: No i'm not, you are. user: Stop contradicting me. George: I'm not. user: You just did it right now. George: You're scaring me. user: Then don't argue with me. George: I did not. user: Yes, you did. George: Did not. user: Did too. George: Did not. user: See? You're arguing with me again. George: I must leave now. user: What for? George: To know things. user: To know bars, more like it. Fine! Get outta here, you drunkard! See if I care. George: Don't you understand , I need to go to sleep. user: You don't sleep, you're a bot. George: I am a human. user: You are a bot who thinks that it's human.