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Loebner Talks AI
Mighty Squirrel writes "This is a fascinating interivew with Hugh Loebner, the academic who has arguably done more to promote the development of artifical intelligence than anyone else. He founded the Loebner prize in 1990 to promote the development of artificial intelligence by asking developers to create a machine which passes the Turing Test — meaning it responds in a way indistinguishable from a human. The latest running of the contest is this weekend and this article shows what an interesting and colourful character Loebner is."
He is the genius who brought the UK the BBC Micro, and is now studying the relationship between AI and biological neurons. His comments on the BBC website make very interesting reading regarding the problems facing AI and computer intelligence.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Hardly a fascinating interview, more like 4 paragraphs and a soundbite or two, if you haven't read TFA, don't bother.
Well, I suppose someone could argue that. But it would be a pretty weak argument. I could cite at least a hundred researchers who are better known and have done more important contributions. to the field of AI.
Just because the best-scoring programs to date on the Turing test are crap does not necessarily mean the test itself is not useful. Yes, it tests for one particular form of AI, but that form would be extremely useful to have if achieved. You may consider your dog highly intelligent, but I'm not likely to want to call it up and ask for advice on any given issue, am I?
Oh no... it's the future.
Well that's really the point of the test. Any "AI" that simply manipulates text as symbols is going to fail the turing test. To make one that can pass the test, imho, would probably require years of training it to speak, like one would with a child. It also requires solving all the associated problems of reference - how can a deaf, blind and anesthesic child truly get a sense of what something is, so much so that they can talk about it(or type about it, assuming they have some kind of direct computer hook up which allows them to read and write text).
:)
Basically, nothing's going to pass the turing test until we have actual AI. Which is the whole point of the test!
I study AI at Reading by the way so I'll be going along to the event tomorrow morning
and use the Voight-Kampff test instead.
The Turing Test, as classically described in books, is not that useful, but the Turing Test, as imagined by Turing, is extremely useful. The idea of the test is that even when you can't measure or define something, you can usually compare it with a known quantity and see if they look similar enough. It's no different from the proof of Fermat's Last Theorum that compared two types of infinity because you couldn't compare the sets directly.
The notion of the Turing Test being simple string manipulation dates back to using Elisa as an early example of sentence parsing in AI classes. Really, the Turing Test is rather more sophisticated. It requires that the machine be indistinguishable from a person, when you black-box test them both. In principle, humans can perform experiments (physical and thought), show lateral thinking, demonstrate imagination and artistic creativity, and so on. The Turing Test does not constrain the judges from testing such stuff, and indeed requires it as these are all facets of what defines intelligence and distinguishes it from mere string manipulation.
If a computer cannot demonstrate modeling the world internally in an analytical, predictive -and- speculative manner, I would regard it as failing the Turing Test. Whether all humans would pass such a test is another matter. I would argue Creationists don't exhibit intelligence, so should be excluded from such an analysis.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Wait...who made psychologists the masters of the term "intelligence" and all derivations thereof?
No, frankly, they can't have that term. And you can't decide what is interesting and is uninteresting.
If I revealed to you right now that I'm a machine writing this response, that would not interest you at all? I'm not a machine. But the point of the Turing test is that I could, in fact, be any Turing-test beating machine rather than a human. Sure, it's a damn Chinese room. But it's still good for talking to.
Whether or not your dog has intelligence has nothing to do with this, because AI is not robot dog manufacturing.
if you can fool people into believing you're intelligent, then you are intelligent?
... once you can fake that, you've got it made."
as my ethics teacher said, "Sincerity is the most important thing
The Loebner Prize is a farce. Read all about it: http://dir.salon.com/story/tech/feature/2003/02/26/loebner_part_one/index.html
Check out this great book by Jeff Hawkins, creator of the Palm, called On Intelligence. His work is about understanding how the brain really works so that you can make truly intelligent machines. Fascinating stuff and firmly based in the facts of reality, which is refreshing to say the least.
Invexi - a Phoenix, AZ based web design and web development company.
You're confusing the Turing test with one class of attempts to pass it. In fact, the test has proven remarkably good at failing that sort of program.
Yes, your dog would fail the Turing test, because the Turing test is designed to test for human level intelligence.
That's a little bit too much personal information there sport. You don't have to post to slashdot every thought that pops into your head you know.
Really now, I wish I had a team partner, because these guys need to take a page from the chess world and buff up their Anti-Trick-Question tactics. Those questions always revolve around rapid context switching that would frankly irritate if not confuse a person as well, such as one speaking a second language. (There's a test for you! Which is the computer and which is the guy speaking his ruined French he learned 20 years ago?)
(Typical Tester fake question) "Is the Queen larger than a breadbox?"
Program: "What kind of question is that?"
Tester: "Answer the question"
Program: "Since you failed to define "Queen" on purpose, you created a question that is simultaneously true and false, and therefore a null question. I can only assume this is some cheap ass attempt to authenticate before you waste your remaining 7 minutes chatting with the human should you be so lucky, so I quit here and now. Ask your judge what to do if your software oppponent is programmed to sulk."
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine