New Contestants On the Turing Test

vitamine73 writes "At 9 a.m. next Sunday, six computer programs — 'artificial conversational entities' — will answer questions posed by human volunteers at the University of Reading in a bid to become the first recognized 'thinking' machine. If any program succeeds, it is likely to be hailed as the most significant breakthrough in artificial intelligence since the IBM supercomputer Deep Blue beat world chess champion Garry Kasparov in 1997. It could also raise profound questions about whether a computer has the potential to be 'conscious' — and if humans should have the 'right' to switch it off."

Reach for the switch...

and see if it complains, first. If it does, then call me back.

Re:Reach for the switch...

Desire to continue to exist is a result of being alive, and evolution, not intelligence. Hamsters don't want to die, but they aren't especially intelligent, and routinely fail self awareness tests.

Human qualities!= intelligence.

Re:Reach for the switch...

and routinely fail self awareness tests

How often do they do these tests?! Is there a class of scientists getting paranoid that hamsters might take over the world if we let our guard down?!

Re:Reach for the switch...

Don't kid yourself. If a hamster ever had the chance he'd eat you and everyone you care about.

Insensitive

Hey, that's not funny! My sister died that way.

Re:Reach for the switch...

Agreed, the human brain is greater than the sum of its parts. It's easy to show that a robot is equal to a human [amazon.com] but it's difficult to believe that a collection of circuits feels the range of emotions and instincts biologically passed down through the ages.

The author of the book and Piccard both sucessfully argue that Data is equal to a human. The most familiar arguments come from the TNG episode "Measure of a Man" in which Starfleet tries to claim ownership of Data so that they can dismantle him.

Re:Reach for the switch...

Data was "alive" because he was defined as such in a work of *fiction*.

He could have equally been a one eyed one horned flying purple people eater if they decided to spend 5 minutes one episode writing that in. It would have fit in as well as any other "plot" in Star Trek.

All that Star Trek shows is that man can conceive of a machine that could be alive. It is a statement about man (the author) not any machine.

Well...

Are they really *thinking* or have the programmers just done some tricks to make it seem that way.

"Teaching to the test", so to speak.

Re:Well...

Are you really thinking?

Prove it.

Re:Well...

If a computer could explain it as well as you do, or couldn't explain the things you can't, apart from whether this means the computer is aware or not, does it really matter? If you see something that is so indistinguishable from a human that nobody could tell, does it matter whether it's a real human being or an emulation of one? Your best bet would be to treat it as a human, he could well be.

Re:Well...

Exactly how to treat a computer is a problem of ethics, not AI. Heck, I EAT PIGS, and those guys are pretty intelligent. I feel mildly bad about it, but they taste so good.....

One of the computers they are using is named 'Ultra Hal.' They even dare to use that name! Hal is a good example: he could talk, reason, teach himself to read lips, TEACH HIMSELF TO LEARN THINGS OUTSIDE OF THE DOMAIN THAT ANYONE HAD IMAGINED FOR HIM, and as mentioned in the movie, no one really understood how he worked exactly, but they understood the general idea to set him up and get him going. If we can do that, then we are close to AI.

On the other hand, a bunch of souped up Eliza bots aren't anything more than weak AI. A sad shadow of the real Hal.

Re:Well...

Algorithm of a typical Slashdot poster:

Click link to story
-Any existing comments?
--If no existing comments, then FrostyPiss! (be sure to click Post Anonymously)
--If exiting comments, then is article of any interest?
---If article is of interest
----Skim the summary.
----Is summary enticing?
-----If summary is enticing, roll random number 1 to 100.
------If random number = 30, then do no read article
---Look for inflaming comments
----If inflaming comments exist, start a flame war.
---Can you make a joke about the article?
----If joke can be made, post a joke.
----If joke can't be made, try anyway.
---Are you an expert on the subject?
----If you are expert, post something informative/insightful.
Go to next article and repeat the process

Re:Well...

The Turing Test is way past it's prime by this point. The original thought of experiment of how to tell if a machine can think has merely become a test to see if a program can fool a human. Mostly it's building up a simplistic way to parse responses to match your massive yet limited supply of answers. We're certainly getting close to having programs able to pass the Test, and I can't see many who would try and claim any of them actually 'think'.

That said, it's still an interesting exercise. The raw amount of data that a program requires to mimic the knowledge of a person is an important challenge by itself. And you might be surprised by either how much... or how little it actually requires. Yet there are other bits that are less clever. In order to pass the Test you really want to create a fake persona so the program can share life experiences it's never had, or else cleverly camouflaged 'experiences' that seem human. "Q: Do you enjoy the outdoors at all? A: Not really, I spend a lot of time in the lab." But then you have to place limits on what the program can do, such as not crunching out math problems on the fly. You'd want it to make mistakes, such as typos or forgetting things or only vaguely remembering things. Acting like it needs to take a break, or has been interrupted.

And then you need to dive into the deeper questions of what it really means to be human, or to be able to think. What would we want an AI to be like? Would we want them to have traits so they seem more human, or would we prefer they be merely efficient thinking machines without our 'limitations'?

Oh Great ....

Now we'll see the vim vs emacs flame war. GREAT! THANKS!

Interesting

If we don't have the right to switch off a conscious machine (one that passes the Turing test) does that imply we have the right to switch off a human who fails a Turing test?

Re:Interesting

If we don't have the right to switch off a conscious machine (one that passes the Turing test) does that imply we have the right to switch off a human who fails a Turing test?

*mutters under breath*
please be yes... please be yes... please be yes.

I wouldn't pray for that

1. In the Turing test, as it was proposed by Turing, basically there is no way for a human to fail it. The test involves a double blind test, where each user interacts with a human and with a machine. Then if the users can't tell which of them is the human, the machine has "won". If the users correctly voted on which of them is the machine, the machine has "lost." There is no scenario there in which the human didn't pass the test. The human is the control point there, not the one taking the test.

2. But maybe you mean a test with only one entity, where basically you just have to say if that entity is too dumb to be a human.

I wouldn't really pray for that to be reasons for "disconnecting" someone. There was a story on /. a while back, titled, basically, "how I failed the Turing test."

Basically someone's ICQ number had landed on a list of sex bots. For some people that was definitive and refutable proof that he is a bot, and nothing he could say would change that. When he got one or two to ask stuff to see if he's a human, the questions were stuff where really the only correct answer for a normal human (as opposed to, say, a nerd who has to sound like he knows everything) was "I don't know." That "I don't know" was further taken as confirmation that he is a bot after all.

So do you want those people to be the ones who judge whether you live or die?

Furthermore, for most people, gullibility is akin to a deadly sin, and being fooled by a machine is akin to an admission of being terminally gullible. By comparison voting that a living human is probably a machine, counts just as being skeptical, which is actually something positive. So all things being equal, the safe vote for their self-image is that you're a machine. No matter what you say. Are you sure you want to risk life and limb on that kind of a lopsided contest?

Artificial Intelligence?

The purpose of (strong) artificial intelligence isn't to trick humans somehow, it is to figure out how our mind works. What is the algorithm that powers the human brain? No one knows.

Who cares if contestants can be tricked by a computer? Who cares if some computer can calculate chess moves faster than any human? None of this helps us get closer to the real purpose of AI, which is why they call it weak AI.

Re:Artificial Intelligence?

Sort of. It also makes computers more (and less useful). Weak AI allows for developers to offload decisions from the operator to the computer that would normally be tedious but out of the realm of a computer's ability to process. Strong AI is of more scientific use and actually brings up the philosophical quandries. It will bring us to greater understanding of how we think, but don't discount the practical uses of machines that pretend to think.

I doubt it will raise any questions

It could also raise profound questions about whether a computer has the potential to be "conscious" -- and if humans should have the 'right' to switch it off."

Maybe in the esteemed opinion of vitamine73 it will, but if you knew anything about how artificial conversation engines were constructed, you would understand that it's anything but sentient. Right now, conversation logic is simply trick laid upon trick to stagger through passing as a human, and doesn't, at its core, contain anything remotely similar to self-aware thought.

Re:I doubt it will raise any questions

I think the overegging of the pudding is down to one Kevin Warwick, better known to readers of the Register as 'Captain Cyborg'.

He's a notorious publicity tart, and is also involved in running these tests, as he's a lecturer in cybernetics.

See the Register's take on it here [theregister.co.uk]

AI? Pffft

This quote from TFA nails it down for me:

...AI is an exciting subject, but the Turing test is pretty crude.

The Turing test doesn't tell you whether a machine is conscious or self-aware... All it tells you is whether or not a programmer or group of programmers created a sufficiently advanced chat-bot. So what if a machine can have "conversations" with someone? That doesn't mean that same machine could create a symphony or look at a sunset and know what makes the view beautiful.

Star Trek androids with emotion chips should stay in the realm of Star Trek, because they're surely not happening here.

Computer Chess has not been AI for a long time

It is likely to be hailed as the most significant breakthrough in artificial intelligence since the IBM supercomputer Deep Blue beat world chess champion Garry Kasparov in 1997.

I don't understand how this is a breakthrough for artificial intelligence. Deep Blue didn't "think", at least not in the way most people think when they consider artificial intelligence. It did what computers are really good at - it computed.

Deep Blue applied an evaluation mechanism specifically tuned to chess - taking the location of pieces on the board and computing a number telling it how "bad" or "good" this position was and how "bad" or "good" responses to this position would be. Granted, it took this to a depth farther than any other chess computer in history, but it was doing essentially what a small, handheld chess computer does.

Of course a computer is going to be good at computing. That doesn't mean it's thinking.

Early chess computers used AI techniques to try and cut out candidate moves. This was expensive in CPU cycles, but the thought was to get them to play chess like humans. Computer chess since AI Winter has been all about number crunching - let Moore's Law take hold and just brute force our way through the problem - evaluate deeper because we have a faster processor. This is what Deep Blue did.

If Deep Blue were true AI, then it wouldn't be limited just to chess. It's an interesting experiment in computer chess, and an interesting experiment in tuning an algorithm working against a human, and in interesting experiment in making a computer chess opening book, but a huge leap forward in AI it isn't.

Nowhere Close to Passing Yet

If you read TFA they have a sample chat which just shows you how stupid these chat bots still are. It is extremely easy to get them to just parrot responses and then try to change the subject in completely random directions.

I have yet to see any chat bot that can figure out the line of questioning, then pick up and introduce interesting things to the conversation that are corollary to that subject. I think the only way you will get bots that will "pass" this test is to have massive databases of words, relationships between words and subjects with corresponding topics of discussion. Still, the computer won't be intelligent, it will just be reciting from its huge database of responses.

I think the type of question i'd ask these bots is something that would require them to extemporize and they'd all fail. For example: "You have two rubber ducks, what are the possible ways you could use them if you don't have a bathtub?"

Any human could reply to that with things like "i'd put them in a stream, run over them with my car, put them on a lake, in the swimming pool" etc but a computer program isn't likely to respond to that in any way that makes sense. The response i'd expect from the computer would be "You like ducks then?".

Holy crap...

From TFA:

Can you tell human from machine?
One of these conversations is between Professor Kevin Warwick (KW) and a human; the other between Warwick and a computer. Can you tell which is which?

Conversation one:
Subject: Hello. My name is Nick and I am a human.
KW: Are you happy being a human?
Subject: Yes, I am. Are you? Good. Then we are both happy.
KW: Yes, I am. Are you happy with your life at present?
Subject: Parts of it. I hate my job, but most people do, right?
KW: I'm OK with mine. What is your job?
Subject: I work as an 'online internet advertising monitor', which is fancy language for electronic filing. What do you do?
KW: I interrogate humans and machines.
Subject: Which ones do you prefer, humans or machines?
KW: Which do you prefer?
Subject: Hmm. Depends on for what purpose you mean.
KW: To go to a restaurant, for example?
Subject: Then I would much prefer going with a human.

Conversation two:
Subject: Hello, my name is Mike and I am a man.
KW: Are you happy being a human?
Subject: Judge, I'm a guy.
KW: Does that worry you?
Subject: Don't worry, we'll work everything through.
KW: Do you have worries then?
Subject: Let's move on from that basis.
KW: Why?
Subject: Why? I like this subject.
KW: What is the subject, do you think?
Subject: What is the subject I wonder if I think? I know that it's good to thonk about. Think deeplt about mysterious subjects.
KW: What mysterious subjects?
Subject: Think deeply about mysterious dubjects.
KW: What's a dubject?

Answers:
Conversation one is with a human; conversation two is with the program Ultra Hal.

No shit, Sherlock? The second conversation stops making sense in the first answer.