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Machines Almost Pass Mass Turing Test
dewilso4 writes "Of the five computer finalists at this year's Loebner prize Turing Test, at least three managed to fool humans into thinking they were human conversationalists. Ready to speak about subjects ranging from Eminem to Slaughterhouse Five and everything in between, these machines are showing they we're merely a clock cycle away from true AI. '... I was fooled. I mistook Eugene for a real human being. In fact, and perhaps this is worse, he was so convincing that I assumed that the human being with whom I was simultaneously conversing was a computer.' Another of the entrants, Jabberwacky, can apparently even woo the ladies: 'Some of its conversational partners confide in it every day; one conversation, with a teenaged girl, lasted 11 hours.'
The winning submission this year, Elbot, fooled 25% of judges into thinking he was human. The threshold for the $100K prize is 30%. Maybe next year ..."
Well, John McCain isn't a leader - he odesn't have 3 brains. He has two - one's lost, and the other is out looking for it. That's the conclusion I've come to, watching him in the debates.
Seriously - the human brain is divided into two halves, and there's some indication that we, as humans, only developed "self-awareness" and "consciousness" quite recently in history. In the case of some types of mental illness, as well as the breakdown of cognitive functioning in older people, we can see the reversion to our former "auto-pilot" state.
It's interesting to see that we can transmit this same "consciousness", to some extent, to other animals, simply by interacting with them. Consciousness may be the ultimate meme, able to cross barriers in species. It's also a good example of how the observer affects the thing observed, not only at the quantum level (the two-slits experiments) but at all levels, just by the act of performing experiments and observing.
A good example is dogs. In the wild, they have a social structure, but no evidence of awareness of the difference between "self" and "other". Not so for many house pets. The dog may hate the bath, but he or she KNOWS that they look a lot better afterwards, and carry themselves with pride afterwards, real show-offs (pride - one of the "sins" - something animals aren't supposed to be capable of :-)
So McCain is just reverting to the original bicameral mind. He's on auto-pilot, making decisions without the necessary judgment. In other words, the feedback between the two sides, that keeps the two in balance, is no longer effective, and his decisions are showing more and more that they are from impulse than from conscious judgment.
Not everyone spells like an American.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.