New Contestants On the Turing Test 630
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... (Score:5, Insightful)
and see if it complains, first. If it does, then call me back.
Re:Reach for the switch... (Score:5, Insightful)
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... (Score:5, Funny)
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... (Score:5, Funny)
Don't kid yourself. If a hamster ever had the chance he'd eat you and everyone you care about.
Insensitive (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Reach for the switch... (Score:5, Funny)
Go for the eyes, Boo! Go for the eyes!
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Re:Reach for the switch... (Score:5, Funny)
This proves little. I have an ex that fails the Turing test.
Re:Reach for the switch... (Score:5, Funny)
This proves little. I have an ex that fails the Turing test.
The ".jpg" extension should have been a hint...
Re:Reach for the switch... (Score:5, Insightful)
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... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Reach for the switch... (Score:4, Funny)
Alive??
The thing couldn't even use contractions. I mean, you'd think with such an advanced brain, it'd be able to use contractions.
No, Data was something far more sinister.
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Re:Reach for the switch... (Score:4, Informative)
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"A machine is a machine regardless of what it appears to be."
Except some think that people are just chemical machines brought about by evolution.
Re:Reach for the switch... (Score:5, Insightful)
you're making groundless assumptions here. complex phenomena can often emerge from fairly simple systems. this can be seen in nature as well as in mathematics and AI. for instance, ant colonies demonstrate very complex group behaviors but each ant is simply following a very small set of hard coded behaviors, and on its own is quite stupid.
your matter of fact attitude can just as easily be applied in reverse by a cybernetic being--it's difficult to believe that a collection of cells has the cognitive capabilities of an advanced AI algorithm running on a supercomputer with complex circuitry and powerful microprocessors.
don't delude yourself. what you experience as "consciousness" is merely the unintended side-effect from the flux of chemical causality occurring in your brain. and all complex organisms are merely cooperative colonies of specialized cells, which by themselves are no more complex in structure, and no more intelligent or self-aware, than primitive unicellular organisms.
AI researchers have an advantage over unguided biological evolution--they don't need to rely on blind trial-and-error, as they are intelligence. we can also analyze existing natural models, such as animal brains, and even human brains. there's no reason why an artificial/digital neural net can't be designed to produce true artificial intelligence. it may not be accomplished in this century, but there's no physical or metaphysical reason why it cannot be done.
Re:Reach for the switch... (Score:4, Interesting)
'but each ant is simply following a very small set of hard coded behaviors, and on its own is quite stupid.'
That is an assumption based upon the fact that ants demonstrate a set of repeatable behaviors. We don't actually know that those behaviors are hard coded or even if they are, if said behaviors are the limit of ant intelligence.
People are still constrained by this idea that a large brain is required for human level or greater intelligence.
Re:Reach for the switch... (Score:5, Interesting)
well, it's an assumption that's based on all the currently available evidence, and i don't just mean passive observation. ant researchers have studied ant behavior in detail, and they actually have a pretty good understanding of how ants communicate with each other and how the colony functions.
it's been known for a while now that ants communicate using chemical signals, specifically pheromones. and with a very small set of different pheromones ant colonies are capable of producing all of the complex behavior patterns necessary to function. scientists have also tested this scientific model by using collected pheromones to trigger spontaneous behaviors in the colony. for instance, just by inserting a specific pheromone into the colony entrance at a particular rate, scientists are able to initiate foraging behavior on command.
and i'm not saying that we are superior to ants (ants compose of 15~20% of terrestrial animal biomass), just that the individual ant itself is not very intelligent. the complex intelligence displayed by ants only emerges at the colony level. that's why they're rightly called superorganisms. and there may in fact be alien superorganisms out there that have far superior intelligence to our own.
the point is, intelligence, as with most complex behaviors, are a form of emergence phenomenon. even human intelligence is simply the result of fairly basic processes. the individual neurons that make up our CNS by themselves cannot demonstrate any kind of intelligence. like an individual ant, all they can really do is propagate electrochemical signals following a limited set of hard coded behaviors. but with billions of them working together you start seeing extremely complex behaviors arise.
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'Genetic complexity...' has nothing to do with what I just said.
I was referring to the data storage capabilities demonstrated in DNA. What happens to be stored in DNA is beside the point. The point is that complex structures and the massive amounts of data required for intelligence to work could easily be contained within a structure that is physically as small as or smaller than DNA.
'but that has to do with coordinating extremely complex chemical reaction sequences and has nothing to do with any re
Re:Reach for the switch... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Assuming that anything metaphysical is just an invention of some hippie on crack is simply close-mindedness. *All* the progress that has *ever* been made, has been made because someone was challenging our idea of how things work. And I think, that there has been, so far, enough controversy around the topic of all this metaphysical stuff, that the only thing that it is safe to assume is that no answer should be obvious.
The moment you stop asking questions is
Re:Reach for the switch... (Score:5, Interesting)
> Unless the Quantum Mind theory is true however (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_mind).
The whole 'maybe the conciousness has something to do with quantum stuff!' thing has always struck me as something that was made up by people who didn't like the thought that the human mind may just be the effect of a complex chemical reaction, and wanted to come up with something that allows for more 'magic'. But I must admit that isn't a good reason to reject the theory. Having said that I see little reason to focus on the Quantum Mind thing while we still don't understand the non-quantum part of the brain (that we know to be important and to exist, unlike the quantum part which may have no significant influence at all).
> Also, we humans all _feel_ that we are alive. If we are dead, we stop feeling that we are alive. A cash register does not _feel_ that it is alive. How can we ever measure, or say for certain, whether a machine _feels_ it is alive in an identical way, or is just the functional equivalent of a cash register that looks up memories and responds according to rules?
Well, since you insist on bringing this up, how can we ever measure, or say for certain, whether another human _feels_ he/she is alive? Maybe all other humans merely pretend to think and have feelings.
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Hamsters only fail self-awareness tests because they refuse to revise.
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What makes you think intelligence is entirely based on a) the external and b) rationality?
Each of us has a model inside our head that describes the universe. We've been passionately building it since we were born. We interact with the universe in a fashion based on the model, and we adapt the model based on our interaction with the universe. That's intelligence.
If the machine has the desire and capacity to improve its internal model, is going to object to us turning it off. If it doesn't object to us tu
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It presupposes that there is a motivation to improve the internal model. Because, if there isn't any motivation to improve the internal model, then there isn't any intelligence. The act of thinking is the act of tweaking the internal model. To not have attachment to the state of the internal model is to neither think nor learn.
I've got a virtual universe in my head. Every day of my life, I've adapted it in an effort to make it better. If I wasn't inclined to do so, I would never have progressed from th
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If this tripe nonsense was in the Daily Mail, I could understand it. But what's it doing on Slashdot?
I seriously hope the current tag, 'bollocks', after only about 20 or so comments, stays there.
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If it does complain, just give it a hug [simulatedc...roduct.com].
Well... (Score:5, Insightful)
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... (Score:5, Insightful)
Are you really thinking?
Prove it.
Re:Well... (Score:4, Interesting)
"Are you really thinking?
Prove it."
well where should i start off with this one. in a textual comment posted on a message board, it is difficult to prove that i really am thinking, and am not a bot highly skilled at crafting humans legible sentences. of course, there is the fact that i've already had to spell checked several words, but you don't really know that since you didn't see me do it. i could post external links that collect data about my everyday life, such as my battle.net profile.
but battle.net is a based off irc protocols, and there have been numerous attempts at writing game playing bots. the big challenge there, is avoiding detection, dealing with random lag, and various intentional flaws introduced when bots became a serious issue, to determine if a player is a human or a bot...
so, where else then? photographs, video, and audio can all be forged. it's a common vector of hackers trying to find a patsy to handle shipping stolen goods over seas... sure this supermodel loves you, and wants you to ship 2,000 packages a week overseas on your own dime.
so where do we go from there. well, i can assure you i do find myself believing that i am a thinking being, and i do have memories and recollections of being a human being. in fact i always see myself as a human being, and i've had the ability to learn new facts and discern the difference between truth and spin in many media formats. and while i play most video games better than the 'ai' that ship with them, i do also suffer from fatigue, and stress and other factors that can make me fail in ways a machine ai never does. of course i can't prove any of this to you.
so basically you come along asking people to 'prove' they think, when the question is entirely subjective, and the only one who can believe they are sentient is the being itself. if an AI bot starts to think it is intelligent because of how it uses it's processor cores, is it not then a sentient being? being able to reply to humans is just part of the test the rest of it happens when the program itself starts to believe it is a being.
Re: "Prove Life" (Score:3, Funny)
Do bots look for Pr0n yet ?
"Ooh, A Harpertown core!"
Re:Well... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Well... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Keep them coming. At least as a programmer in a cubicle, I have a better chance at becoming "The One".
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Your parents told you "rules" like "The stove is hot" "Hot things burn you" and "Burns hurt". The programmer tells these same things to the computer. The brain is just a highly parellel computer that over the years has evolved advanced programming.
There is no magic in science.
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If you don't know what that nonphysical entity is or how it comes to be, then you don't know that a computer wouldn't have it too. If you do know, please share.
Re:Well... (Score:5, Funny)
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
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"I can explain anything a computer does."
can you now?
Sure you can look at the lowest level operations but emergent behaviour can be a problem.
An artificial neural network can be used to solve certain problems without the programmer needing to understand the solution the machine develops.
Just because you understand boolean logic doesn't mean you can understand how a learning program plays a game like backgammon better than any human could. You might understand how the program is built but not the solution it
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Merely being aware enough to question whether or not you are really thinking is sufficient to establish that you are.
Only an entity with self-awareness and the ability to think can ask that question.
Somebody [wikipedia.org] once made a very similar argument... Something along the lines of:
"I think therefore I am" [wikipedia.org]
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Not replicants (Score:3, Informative)
The term you're looking for is Artificial Intelligence.
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
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Here's a good place to start: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Room [wikipedia.org]
Re:Well... (Score:4, Interesting)
I think you'll get an answer as soon as you define *thinking*. This is the problem artificial intelligence research faces. People demand a quality from machines without giving a definition of it.
You can't just demand that something meet some arbitrary ideal. It's like asking a programmer to develop a beautiful text editor. It's subjective and you're likely to hate it when they think it's great.
Oh Great .... (Score:5, Funny)
Now we'll see the vim vs emacs flame war. GREAT! THANKS!
Re:Well... (Score:5, Insightful)
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'?
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It's interesting that you say that the machine should make some mistakes because I picked the second conversation in the article as the machine generated one because it had mistakes that didn't "feel" human.
I have to say though that both conversations felt very strange and unhuman much like all the other Turning test conversations I've read. They are always very question and answer based where as real conversations aren't anything like that. I think there is still scope for a test like the Turning test but
You can tell the machine apart easily (Score:3, Insightful)
The human in the top conversation does.
Interesting (Score:5, Interesting)
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"The Great Farkpocalypse of 2009"? Sounds good to me.
Re:Interesting (Score:5, Funny)
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 (Score:5, Interesting)
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?
A further thing to ponder (Score:3, Interesting)
It just occured to me that, while people usually think of the Turing test as, basically, "seeing if a machine is smart enough to pass for a human", the test actually doesn't say that. It doesn't put any limit on how to tell it's a machine. Failing by being obviously too smart is a perfectly good way to fail too.
E.g., if I ask them to calculate e to the power of square root of 1234567890987654321 and say that the one who had the correct answer first is the computer, that's a perfectly valid way to judge a Tu
Re:A further thing to ponder (Score:4, Interesting)
Interesting set up for detecting a machine. Here's another wrinkle to it: am I allowed to use Google to answer any questions? If so, what does that make me? A human-machine agglomeration? A human with a machine interface?
Further - what role does knowledge play in making one human?
Re:Interesting (Score:4, Funny)
Along the same lines i've thought about making a bot that passes the 4chan turing test. It couldn't be THAT hard really.... It'd be like simulating a fish.
We should avoid building real AIs for now (Score:5, Interesting)
Personally I think we should be focusing on augmenting humans instead of creating "Real" AIs.
Why? Because we are not doing a good job taking care of the billions of already existing nonhuman intelligences. So why create even more to abuse and enslave?
Just because you can have children doesn't automatically mean the time is right. Wait till we as a civilization have grown up (to be a mature civilization) then maybe it won't be such a bad idea to have "children" of our own.
Don't forget, dogs are generally happy to obey humans and do not resent us - but this took many generations of breeding.
If we create very intelligent AIs without all the other "goodies" the "I'm so happy to see you" doggies have "built-in", we're just creating more problems rather than solutions.
In contrast if we use that sort of tech to augment humans so that they can do things better and more easily we avoid a whole bunch of potential issues.
The lines might get blurry at some point, but by that point we'd probably be more ready.
Artificial Intelligence? (Score:5, Interesting)
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? (Score:4, Informative)
No, that's the purpose of cognitive science. Artificial intelligence is the name that we give to the study of technology that is between commonplace and (to borrow Arthur C. Clarke's terminology) magic.
Re:Artificial Intelligence? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Artificial Intelligence? (Score:4, Insightful)
As far as it goes, there are probably a dozen good questions to figure out if it is a computer or human:
Any of these questions might possibly be answered by copying someone's answer from the internet, but if you ask a few of them, pretty soon you will realize this guy is either schizophrenic, or a computer.
So yeah, this might trick a few people, or even a lot, but it's not going to really make old man Turing feel good about it. Unless they actually have solved it.
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Re:Artificial Intelligence? (Score:4, Interesting)
Why do you assume that your brain uses a different approach than the machines that will eventually pass the Turing test?
Because if they had real AI, they would be using it for much more interesting problems than trying to trick humans.
I do not consider myself special. I just think it's important to remember the true goal of AI, that we are trying to understand how the mind works. Have you seen Tron? When you have a computer that has a desire to take the system from the owner, that can increase its own intelligence, then we will have something interesting. Increase its own intelligence! Imagine that. Do you think these wannabe Elizas can do that?
Why? (Score:2)
Why would it raise these questions? I don't think anyone would disagree that computers are far better at matrix algebra than humans could ever be, why isn't that the test? The ability to invert matrices differentiates from the other orders more so than language does anyway. Why this arbitrary test? It doesn't seem to have anything more to do with 'consciousness' than an ATM does. I'm not trying to discredit the hard work and progress here, but jumping to consciousness is probably not going to happen in
Oh come on.. (Score:2)
GROAN.
I doubt it will raise any questions (Score:5, Insightful)
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 (Score:5, Interesting)
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]
Right to switch it off? (Score:2)
Unless you are going to pay my electric bill, you better not tell me I can't turn of JoJo the humungoid file server because he started dreaming.
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A modified Turing test (Score:3, Interesting)
AI? Pffft (Score:5, Interesting)
...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.
Re:AI? Pffft (Score:5, Insightful)
Can you create a symphony? Oops, did you just fail your own definition of sentience?
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I think there is not enough focus in AI research on emotions and some kind of base programming.
We know a sunset is beautiful, but what is it? Is it the rasterized image of the sunset, a specific arrangement of the pixels? No that surely isn't it. What makes it beautiful to us is because there are some very, very deeply hidden associations to something deep within us that cause an emotional outburst when we see a beautiful sunset.
I don't believe that we will ever have a strong AI if all it's focused
Re:AI? Pffft (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm sure these bots could fool you for an hour in a select setting, but if you were to talk to them on AIM every night for 6 months on a variety of subjects from opinions to jokes, to hopes and dreams, they would need to be practically human to not fail.
Sure you can argue that it would just be an awesome ball of clever tricks, like auto-reading news feeds and analyzing stories for conversation currency. The thing about clever tricks is that a lot of what the human brain does in the separate lobes are just clever tricks, it's when you combine these all together and they start working with each other that you get something amazing.
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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.
A blind man cannot look at a sunset and know what makes it beautiful. I cannot create a symphony.
Your argument is even worse than the Turing test, and cannot even be measured. Does cat /dev/urandom > /dev/dsp count as a symphony? Does the ability to look up sunsets on Wikipedia count as having knowledge/memory?
At least the Turing test provides a way to disprove intelligence, and EVERY scientific endeavor needs a way to be proved wrong, or else it is just a flight of fancy.
Cogito, ergo sum.
Descartes was correct with "I th
More like the reverse (Score:3, Interesting)
Personally I think the reverse is more likely. That not only humans will have the right to switch programs off, but other programs too, and this is going to evolve into the "right" to "switch off" humans, due to a better understanding of exactly what a human is.
Think about it. If we're able to predict human actions even 50% many of us wouldn't consider eachother persons anymore, but mere programs.
If we can predict 90% or so, it's hopeless trying to defend that there's anything conscious about these 2-legged mammals we find in the cities. Even a little bit of drugs, even soft ones, in a human and nobody has any trouble whatsoever predicting what's going to happen.
Furthermore programmatic consciousness is a LOT cheaper (100 per cpu ?) than a real life human. Contributes a lot less to oil consumption, co2, and so on and so forth ... Billions of times more mobile than a human (for a program going into orbit, or to the moon or mars, or even other stars once a basic presence is established, would pausing yourself, copying yourself over, and resuming. Going to the bahamas has the price of a phone call.
They'd be more capable, can be made virtually involnerable (to kill a redundant program you'd have to terminate all computers it runs on) ...
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I think that the Turing test is too simple (Score:2)
Human's are built to assume that the entity they are talking with understands them. Ever since I first saw Eliza in action (where people would have "meaningful" interactions with a program that was not much more than a stimulus-response box) I realized that the Turing test was really meaningless.
To put it another way, if IBM wanted to put the money into the Turing test that they put into chess, there would be a very good Turing tester, but no more understanding or consciousness than Deep Blue has understand
*cough* Bullshit! *cough* (Score:2)
*cough* Bullshit! *cough*
Computer Chess has not been AI for a long time (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Of course a computer is going to be good at computing. That doesn't mean it's thinking.
Edsger Dijkstra said it [utexas.edu] quite well:
The question of whether Machines Can Think ... is about as relevant as the question of whether Submarines Can Swim
Nowhere Close to Passing Yet (Score:5, Insightful)
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?".
If it's really thinking.. (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:If it's really thinking.. (Score:4, Insightful)
If a computer program couldn't read a sentence like that you'd just have gotten yourself hired by Google to write their next captcha. Any job offers appear in your inbox this morning?
AS (Score:3)
I think this question was once posed by Stanislaw Lem (sorry no source)
Holy crap... (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Coming soon to tech support chat. (Score:3, Funny)
As soon as this sort of works, it will take over first level tech support. If it hasn't already.
What about Computer versus Computer? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
...each other that a human can eavesdrop
You working for the NSA by any chance??? or probably AT&T?
My daughter would not pass the Turing Test (Score:5, Interesting)
My daughter is 13 months old. She would not pass the Turing Test, yet is undeniably intelligent.
She recognizes my wife and I and all of our relatives, but is wary of strangers.
She learned cause and effect many months ago by observation: when you press a button, cool stuff happens. (We pick up the remote, she looks at the TV. We put a hand on a light switch, she looks at the light.)
She knows our relatives' names, and will look at them when you ask "Where's Charles?" or "Where's Lindsey?"
She responds to simple requests like, "Could you bring me the toy?"
She's learned how to crawl. She's learned how to walk. She's learned simple sign language for "light," "dog," "food," and "more."
I'm a long time amatuer AI hacker/researcher. I've learned more about artificial intelligence from watching my daughter develop than from my MS in CS and the bits of PhD work I did. There's an entire childhood, a virtual lifetime, of development and ability behind "carrying on a conversation." Creating a facade that does so, no matter how complex, (and we haven't even done that yet) will not be intelligent. Period. And I think it's the focus on the end results, (i.e. simulated conversation) and not on the long tedious journey it takes to create a being, that's hobbled AI research for 50 years.
True AI will never be developed if we continue to focus on the result of, and not the journey to, intelligence.
Would Palin pass the Turing test? (Score:3, Funny)
I'm not going to answer that question.
I'm going to talk about how much of a maverick I am. You see, Barack Obama associates with terrorists...
Remember, kids... (Score:4, Insightful)
One solution would be to ask the program (Score:3, Interesting)
Thoughts on AI (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm behind one of the bots in the Loebner Contest. I feel that the Turing Test is a rather open-ended measure of intelligence. It depends a lot on the person conversing with the bot and the situation they're in. For example, it would be easier to convince a child than an adult. It would be easier to convince someone having a general conversation than one trying to have a detailed conversation about his scientific specialty (unless the bot was built for that).
Context also plays a huge role. I had some early bots running on a bulletin board system a number of years back. They appeared like other users and I didn't let anyone know that a few of the users were AI. Amazingly, some people befriended these bots and had ongoing relationships that lasted for months. Without thinking of the possibility that these weren't real people, every imperfect response was attributed to a human cause. For example, when the bot was repetitive, the person thought it was using catch-phrases. When it didn't answer specific questions, the person thought it was being defensive and tried to get it to open up. It was such a simple bot, but in that context, some people had no idea they weren't real.
Our ability to personify, to project human qualities into things, is well known. From the imaginative play of a child with a toy to cultural beliefs about forces, mythical creatures, dieties, and ghosts that we can interact with - people can imaginatively fill in the blanks and are able to believe that a real personality is behind almost anything. Our job as botmasters is to make that more and more easy to do. And eventually, when AI reaches a certain point, it will no longer be a matter of personification at all.
Profoundness (Score:3, Insightful)
It could also raise profound questions about whether a computer has the potential to be 'conscious'
Equally profound: can a submarine swim?
I'm with dijkstra - who cares? At best, it's a question of semantics, based on how we define swimming - and the question of AI is even more silly, since we haven't defined consciousness properly in the first place...
Reward and Punishment (Score:3, Insightful)
One of the fundamental problems in developing an AI is that we have this idea that if we supply a computer with a large database and a really long list of ways to interpret the data, that it'll somehow eventually become intelligent in some manner.
But it overlooks a manner of learning we take for granted, reward and punishment... consequences for good or bad decisions. How do you define such parameters to a machine without direct human involvement at every step. And even doing it this way, would the end result really be intelligence at all, or merely an imitation based upon the preferences of the human in question. How do we create a situation where the option to be disobedient toward a human directly benefits the machine itself?
Without the option or ability to rebel against a figure of authority, you can't really consider it true intelligence when it lacks the ability to adapt itself beyond the scope of it's own program and rules to achieve some sort of perceived benefit relative to it's own interests.
Re:For as long as I'm paying for the electricity.. (Score:4, Insightful)