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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.
If the reply back about Sarah Palin is "She's great and would be the best person to be our next president!" you are talking to a computer.
I'll be damn! I'd never thought there would be advantages to being a frenchman!
Be very, very careful what you put into that head, because you will never, ever get it out. - Cardinal Wolsey
I for one welcome our new chatbot overlords.
I'm totally not one of them, you can trust me.
On the occasion I get messaged by a random stranger that seems half way legit I just give them a Turing Test made up on the spot. It's usually something lame like "Joe and Pete were on a bus, Pete has four nickles Joe has six pennies between the two of them what type of vehicle were they on?". I usually apologize for that in advanced. The machines fail every time, but the best one I saw called me weird for saying it, asked what I meant, then about two minutes later gave me the right answer telling me a person was checking logs. (I was spending the time in between screwing with the bot)
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Is it getting harder to tell the difference because the bots are getting smarter, or simply because the intellectual level of an average random chat session keeps plummeting?
Reply to a few Craigslist "Casual Encounters" posts. Almost all are a bot of some sort. Some more clever than others. Best one I saw was able to respond to an initial response quite well... it obviously understood the context to some degree. Then they give you an IM screen name to "chat" with them. Again, very context aware... all got to the point where they "try" and hook up their webcam, it "doesn't work", so they get you to go to some free "webcam sharing" site where you have to verify your age with a credit card... only when you read the fine print, after your "trial period" you get nailed for all sorts of fees... almost daily fees.
Want to see one in action?
AIM: livewirex31
Yahoo IM: greenlovex3
MSN: livewirex23@live.com
This isn't one of the better ones I have found, but I can see how it can fool most desperate individuals.
I wonder how many Slashdotters are actually bots, and how you would find us out...
Oops, I mean--ack--
+++out of cheese error+++
+++please reinstall universe+++
+++redo from start+++
Find environmentally and socially responsible products on http://buy-right.net
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.
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
I've yet to find a single bot that has ever understood this demand:
Can you type this backwards, read it, and tell me the result, please? 'net sulp neetfif'
That's nothing - I've been sleeping with a bot for 22 years.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
That's nothing - I've been sleeping with a bot for 22 years.
Your hand is not cybernetic! Now, write that on the blackboard 500 times.
Disclaimer: The opinions and actions of the US Gov't are in no way representative of those held by this author or its ci