Turing test (UNCLASSIFIED)

[Garson O'Toole]

Bill Mullins wrote:
> The Turing test is a situation where a person communicates back a forth
> with what may be a person, or it may be a computer.  If the person can't
> reliably distinguish the computer from the person, based on the content
> of the messages sent back from the computer/person, then the computer
> passes the test -- it is "artificially intelligent."
>
> In a response to a comment on a Language Log post
> http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=1701
>
> Geoff Numberg said
> "Which only goes to show that the Turing test can work both ways: do
> something dumb enough, and it's hard to tell you from a machine."

Here is another twist. The annual Loebner Prize competition attempts
to implement the Turing test as part of a contest. Awards are given to
the most human-like chatterbots selected by human judges. The excerpt
below is about a program that was entered into the competition several
years ago. A strategy employed in order to appear human is described:

http://www.javamonkey.com/resume/turing.html

[Begin excerpt]
The programmer even programmed "Whimsical" to make typing errors such
as typing the wrong letter and then backing up to correct it, all of
which was shown on the judges terminals which received each message
keystroke by keystroke. Several programs tried this tactic to add a
bit of a human touch but some were more successful than others -- one
program made a typo, backed up to fix it, and then typed the
correction ten times faster than any human could.
[End excerpt]

If you wish to be considered human you must do something sufficiently
dumb to qualify.

Bill Mullins message continued:
>
> This strikes me as similar in form to Niven's law ("Any sufficiently
> rigorously defined magic is indistinguishable from technology."), an
> inversion of Clarke's Third Law ("Any sufficiently advanced technology
> is indistinguishable from magic."
>
> Did Nunberg come up with a new law?  Has anyone else ever stated the
> idea that way?
>
>
>
> Classification: UNCLASSIFIED
> Caveats: NONE
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>

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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org