AI Researchers Say 'Rascals' Might Pass Turing Test

An anonymous reader writes "Passing the Turing test is the holy grail of artificial intelligence (AI) and now researchers claim it may be possible using the world's fastest supercomputer (IBM's Blue Gene). This version of the Turing test pits a human conversing with a synthetic character powered by Rascals software crafted at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. RPI is aiming to pass AI's final exam this fall, by pairing the most powerful university-based supercomputing system in the world with its new multimedia group which is designing a holodeck, a la Star Trek."

Comments

But the real question is...

[Asmor]

Will it have a little AIBO dog with a ring around one eye?

Misread

[jekewa]

I didn't read the article, but at first glance thought the title was "racists might pass Turing test."

Creating a character won't help

[Shimmer]

I think the people behind this misunderstand the difficulty (and purpose) of passing the Turing test. The problem isn't in manufacturing a believable back story for your program's "character". The problem is in communicating effectively in spite of the inherent ambiguity, fuzziness, and confusion of human languages. I think it's very unlikely that any team is about to meet this threshold.

Re:yes, but is it really intelligent?

[Anonymous Coward]

You're right! They should call it "artificial intelligence" or something like that.

Re:Do we really...

[flaming error]

Why not? The first humans were.

What crap

[Reality Master 101]

"That's how we plan to pass this limited version of the Turing test."

If it's a limited version of the Turing Test, then it's not the Turing Test. They don't actually define exactly what the limits are. But any open ended test is doomed to failure based on our state of the art in A.I. (read: there is no science of Artificial Intelligence, in the sense of artificial cognition).

"What do you think a typical mother would say if she found out her daughter was going to enter the porn industry."

"Why do you think children have emotional attachments to their parents?"

"Which is worse, racism or sexism?"

"Would you rather be a fireman or an astronaut, and why?"

Any sort of open-ended question that requires human cultural knowledge and asking it to support its conclusion is going to cause it to barf.

Now, if the point of this is whether you can fool someone into thinking the Avatar was human when they didn't know it was a test, well, who cares? Eliza was able to do that back in the 1970s.

Lastly, who says the Turing Test (or any A.I. test) needs to take place in real time? I would be impressed if they came back with a human-level answer in a month of processing time. That's equivalent to a computer 2.5 million times faster than a computer that could produce the answer in one second. That they can't even do that should tell people that speed is not the problem in A.I. research. We have absolutely no fundamental model of how it all works.

Re:yes, but is it really intelligent?

[orclevegam]

Anyone know what he means by this being a "limited" version of the Turing test? The AI does ok until you ask it what the airspeed of an unladen swallow is. It also only gets the favorite color question right about 50% of the time.

Re:yes, but is it really intelligent?

[Bugmaster]

This computer can have no BIOS, OS, no programming at all. When it learns to use its own hardware, figures out network protocols and starts downloading web pages and porn, you have true AI.

That's like saying, "take a human baby, put him in front of an Internet kiosk. Make sure the baby has no nervous system or brain of any kind. Once he figures out how to use his eyes and fingers, and starts googling for porn, you have true natural intelligence". Your requirements are way too restrictive; no human would pass them.

Re:Big Changes are comming.

[SBrach]

You made grammar errors in your grammar correction.