Turing proposed that the ultimate test for an AI was to behave in a human-like manner such that a human observer could not discern the behavior of the machine from the behavior of another human.
Still, there are many who argue that although machines may one day pass Turing's test, they will nevertheless lack the essential consciousness or awareness that humans possess. See John Searle's paper, "Chinese Room". Nobody knows of a good, direct test for awareness.
Still others (Roger Penrose) do not rule out the possibility of genuine machine intelligence, but think that we have much to learn about our own minds before we can consider it seriously. Penrose specifically argues that our current understanding of science is too weak too incorporate an accurate model of conscious thought. But our science may change and one day become sufficient.
In any case, 2009 sounds like a very optimistic (pessimistic?) estimate.
Flip a coin twice. If the result is two tails, answer "yes" to this question. If the result is two heads, answer "no". If the result is one head and one tail, answer truthfully:
Are you a homosexual?
Nothing known about that one person, but integrate the results over a large enough sample... The catch: the person taking the survey must trust the random number generator, so low-tech things (like coin tosses) would work best.
Slashdot Mirror
Turing proposed that the ultimate test for an AI was to behave in a human-like manner such that a human observer could not discern the behavior of the machine from the behavior of another human.
Still, there are many who argue that although machines may one day pass Turing's test, they will nevertheless lack the essential consciousness or awareness that humans possess. See John Searle's paper, "Chinese Room". Nobody knows of a good, direct test for awareness.
Still others (Roger Penrose) do not rule out the possibility of genuine machine intelligence, but think that we have much to learn about our own minds before we can consider it seriously. Penrose specifically argues that our current understanding of science is too weak too incorporate an accurate model of conscious thought. But our science may change and one day become sufficient.
In any case, 2009 sounds like a very optimistic (pessimistic?) estimate.
Flip a coin twice. If the result is two tails, answer "yes" to this question. If the result is two heads, answer "no". If the result is one head and one tail, answer truthfully:
Are you a homosexual?
Nothing known about that one person, but integrate the results over a large enough sample... The catch: the person taking the survey must trust the random number generator, so low-tech things (like coin tosses) would work best.
Open Source: Data, Analog voice, VOIP, PBX... here.