The Turing Test

-A test of a machine’s ability to exhibit intelligent behavior equivalent to, or indistinguishable from, that of a human.

Alan Turing

-He was the first to design a programmable computing device PTuring machine)

Turing’s “Imitation Game” with man, woman and judge

  • The man and woman are hidden from the judge’s view but can communicate with the judge by teletype
  • The judge’s job is to guess which interlocutor is the man and which is the woman

The Turing Test

-Whether a judge can determine if he is communicating with a human being or a computer

Dennett’s View of the Turing Test:

  • It is a strong test of thinking
  • There is a common misapplication that leads to dramatic overestimation of a computer

Descartes’ View of Machines

-Ordinary conversation would put a strain on artificial intelligence Pi.e. computers)

Quick-Probe Assumption

-Nothing could pass the Turing test without being able to perform indefinitely many other clearly intelligent actions.

-Testing for a wider competence.

-i.e. if a computer wants to win at an imitation game, it needs to have a lot of world experience and knowledge.

-Ex: An Irish man is excited about a pint of Guinness. A human would laugh and know about that culture: the computer may not.

Quick-Probe Examples:

  • Playing chess: any program can do that without doing other things.
  • Solve the Arab-Israeli Conflict: unrepeatable, slow, and not clear.
  • Steal British crowns without violence: repeatable, slow, expensive, and clear.

Operationalism:

-The tactic of defining the presence of some property

-Ex: intelligence: established once and for all by the passing of some test

William Wood’s LUNAR program:

-answers scientists questions about moon rocks

Combinatorial Explosion

-Describes the effect of functions that grow very rapidly as a result of combinatorial considerations

-In order for a computer to come off like a human, it would need to prevent combinatorial explosion

Kenneth Colby, PARRY program

-the PARRY program is a trained paranoid computer patient that thinks the Mafia is out to get him

-Colby asked psychiatrists to be the “judge” and interview the PARRY program by teletype and another human paranoid being by teletype.

-When asked to determine which was the computer or the human being, they couldn’t.

-This was a legitimate Turing test.

-The issue: PARRY was trained to deal with the sorts of questions psychiatrists normally ask.

Expert Systems PPotemkin Villages)

-Systems that are designed to be practical

-Software specialists designed to diagnose, analyze, etc.

-Ex: PROSPECTOR Ppredicted the existence of a large mineral deposit), MYCIN Pdiagnoses infections of the blood)

CYRUS program PComputerized Yale Retrieval Updating System):

-Named after Cyrus Vance, who was the secretary of state in the Carter admin.

-Because CYRUS was being fed information through daily news, the computer may have taken things too literally or not be able to answer some questions.

Solution to the Expert Systems Computer Problem

-Ask all researchers and users of computers to probe their systems before they rely on them Dennett’s Conclusions:

  • The Turing test in unadulterated, unrestricted form is strong if well used. Any computer that passes the unrestricted test will be a thinking thing.
  • Turing’s test is not just effective, it is natural – the problem of overestimation of cognitive prowess is a real social problem. We should take steps to avert this overestimation.

Bedridden

-Purely language-using systems