Slashdot Mirror
Turing Test Passed
schwit1 (797399) writes "Eugene Goostman, a computer program pretending to be a young Ukrainian boy, successfully duped enough humans to pass the iconic test. The Turing Test which requires that computers are indistinguishable from humans — is considered a landmark in the development of artificial intelligence, but academics have warned that the technology could be used for cybercrime. Computing pioneer Alan Turing said that a computer could be understood to be thinking if it passed the test, which requires that a computer dupes 30 per cent of human interrogators in five-minute text conversations."
The test itself failed and is meaningless.
Because most humans would fail?
By random chance you would detect the computer 50% of the time, so that should be the goal.
Still 30% as "passing" seems unreasonably low.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
Turing never participated in Facebook chats. Our expectations of intelligence for the other side has been lowered a lot. We attribute to stupidity what can be explained by an AI in the other side. And of course, the stupid side could be the one talking to the AI too.
I feel like the requirements for the Turing test have been consistently lowered over the years to match what would be considered realistic to achieve rather than, as Alan Turing seemed to believe, demonstrate that a computer can be said to actually be "thinking."
"Well, 30% isn't very impressive."
"Well, but people expect online correspondents to be dumb."
"Well, nobody ever thought the Turing test really meant anything."
Whether you "believe in" AI or not, progress is happening.
There will always be people who refuse to believe that a computer can be intelligent "in the same sense that humans are". Eventually, though, most of us will recognize and accept that intelligence and self-awareness are mostly a matter of illusion, and that there's nothing to prevent a machine from manifesting that same illusion.
Turing machines are a thought experiment because of the unbounded tape, which a physical computer cannot match. Real computers are analogous to a linear bounded automation, on which halting is solvable but not always tractable.
It convinced 33% of judges it's a 13-year-old Ukrainian. Since the test wasn't run in Ukrainian, you can't really say it proved that it had human-level language skills. Poor syntax, grammar, not understanding the question, etc. would be excused by the Judges as the "kid" doesn't know English well.
Since the program claimed to be 13, it also did not actually have to understand most of the things there are to talk about. Or anything, really. As an Englishman you wouldn't expect a Ukrainian teen to know anything about your life in England, and in turn the computer could make up all kinds of things about it's life in Ukraine and you'd have no clue.
So this isn't really AI, it's a take on the Eliza program of the late 80s/early 90s that hides the computer better.
Now if the test had been in Ukrainian, and happened in Odessa or Kiev; or even in Russian and in Moscow; tricking 33% into thinking your computer is a 13-year-old Ukrainian boy would be really fucking hard. It would be an amazing accomplishment.
And a chair is not a chair. It seems you are not living in the real world. Except for high functioning autism, autism is a severe mental dysfunction.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Most humans _are_ stupid. AI on their level would not be useful at all.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
All it showed, like any other Turing Test, is the gullibility of the subjects.
1) "Ukrainian" speaking English
2) 13 years old
Right there you have set up an expectation in the audience of subjects for a limited vocabulary, no need for grammatical perfection, little need for slang, and a lack of education. Now add in "star wars and matrix" and you have reduced the topics of discussion even more to the ones the programmers know best.
This thing would never have answered a question of 'Why', it also was under no pressure to being able to create a pun, both of which are easy things any older and educated human could do.
Garbage test, garbage results.
As usual.
"But remember, most lynch mobs aren't this nice." (H.Simpson)
-- Joe
What has been conducted precisely matches Turing's proposed immitation game.
While they may have matched the letter of it, they subverted the spirit of the test. This quote from the programme maker in particular is highly suggestive that they lowered the standards :-
To illustrate what I mean by lowered standards, imagine if I set up the same test, with 10 entries, and I tell the judges some of them are 2 year old babies playing on the keyboard. Armed with this information, some of the judges are likely to interpret even gibberish as typed by a human and it is not too farfetched to get more than 30% of them to agree.
This "result" is bollocks and a pure publicity stunt conveniently on falling on the 60th anniversary of Turing's death.
I want to see the actual transcripts which do not appear to have been released so far, which in itself is highly suspicious.