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Is Your IM Buddy Really a Computer?

audiovideodisco writes "Every year the Loebner Prize goes to the chatbot (and the corresponding human companion) that fares best on a Turing test administered by a panel of judges. Discover talked to Kevin Warwick, the professor who runs the competition, to get pointers on how one would go about detecting a bot. While there are some general approaches you can use, nothing is foolproof — and asking about Sarah Palin can be downright deceptive. One judge concluded an interlocutor was a bot because it didn't recognize Palin's name ... but it turned out the chatter was a French librarian who'd simply never heard of her." The chat transcripts show how difficult picking bot from non-bot is getting.

13 of 288 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Or is your computer really an IM Buddy? by mcfatboy93 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I guess a trained AI would be better at fakeing being your IM-buddy because some people IM like a text message where they say things with as few characters as possable.

    It would be hard to make an AI that could understand that with all the mispeling word and stuff

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  2. Philosophical by gilgongo · · Score: 3, Insightful

    It's somewhat philosophical, but I've often wondered why people really care about whether an interlocutor is a machine or not. I mean, when you go down the to local corner shop to buy some milk, you're not bothered if the person who serves you doesn't know who wrote Paradise Lost, or who won the game last night. Sure, you could ask them, but what does it matter if they don't know?

    The role of context and intelligence is hardly ever given much consideration, but it seems hugely important.

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  3. Using Twitter for material by clicktician · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Is it cheating if your IM bot is fed by another bot scanning Twitter for topical material?

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  4. Re:I have a way of dealing with this, by Shimmer · · Score: 2, Insightful

    What does "inferring things" have to do with emotions?

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  5. Re:Sara who by Korin43 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Yeah but how many times did you not vote for someone because of their VP pick?

  6. Re:Obama Policies Will Bankrupt USA Tsarkon Report by zonky · · Score: 2, Insightful

    (s)He could be a logged-in bot, posting as anon?

  7. Re:I have a way of dealing with this, by Shadow+of+Eternity · · Score: 4, Insightful

    "inference - A judgement based on reasoning rather than on direct or explicit statement" Making such a judgement about the emotional state of someone and cannot be guessed with a yes/no A/B answer is something that I've yet to see an AI do but most people don't have any trouble with.

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  8. Re:Obligatory by digitig · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Does it please you to believe I am totally not one of them I can trust you?

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  9. Re:Not necessarily by radtea · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It could also be that you're just talking to a fucking moron.

    Yeah, there's a huge problem with the Turing Test, which is that you have to distinguish between a computer and a person drawn from the pool of humans intelligent and aware enough to have learned to speak and use a keyboard.

    Unfortunately, as YouTube (and even /.) comments demonstrate, there is no lower limit to the intellectual capacity of a person who is still capable of speaking and using a keyboard.

    Therefore, the Turing Test is not, properly speaking, about distinguishing between artificial and real intelligence because a significant portion of the human population will be below any finite threshold of "intelligence" as the term is ordinarily construed. Ergo, any bot that reaches even a minimal level of coherence will be indistinguishable from some humans.

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  10. Re:re Never heard of Palin? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Aside from the 35 hour week, wine for a euro a bottle, amazing food, and hot (albeit potentially hairy) women? The ski resorts? The Mediterranean resorts? The Maginot line? Knowing that steak should be rare and bloody...

  11. Re:ways to combat it by YenTheFirst · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Wonder if japanese-speaking bot would fare better, I do. Similar, Yoda-speak and Japanese grammar, are.

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  12. Re:Not necessarily by Opportunist · · Score: 2, Insightful

    The problem isn't that bots get smarter. The problem is that people get dumber.

    Usually, and quite sadly, the distinguishing feature is that the bot has better typing skills.

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  13. Re:Not necessarily by L4t3r4lu5 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Usually, and quite sadly, the distinguishing feature is that the bot has better typing skills.

    Only because the guy who programmed it was a good typist.

    Next development: Entropy-based typing errors.

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