"intelligent" conversation

I just stumbled across a site mentioning the Turing test, I'd never heard of it before and found it quite interesting
I'm sure that a lot of ATSer's will already know about it but for the benefit of those who like me didn't it goes as follows

Turing Test is meant to determine if a computer program has intelligence. Quoting Turing, the original imitation game can be described as follows:

The new form of the problem can be described in terms of a game which we call the "imitation game." It is played with three people, a man (A), a woman (B), and an interrogator (C) who may be of either sex. The interrogator stays in a room apart from the other two. The object of the game for the interrogator is to determine which of the other two is the man and which is the woman. He knows them by labels X and Y, and at the end of the game he says either "X is A and Y is B" or "X is B and Y is A." The interrogator is allowed to put questions to A and B.



When talking about the Turing Test today what is generally understood is the following: The interrogator is connected to one person and one machine via a terminal, therefore can't see her counterparts. Her task is to find out which of the two candidates is the machine, and which is the human only by asking them questions. If the machine can "fool" the interrogator, it is intelligent.

This test has been subject to different kinds of criticism and has been at the heart of many discussions in AI, philosophy and cognitive science for the past 50 years.

cogsci.ucsd.edu...


also through this site I found some links to some computers that you can talk with

first I talked to Fred, but he was quite hard work sometimes
robitron.dynip.com...

and then I talked to jabberwock, and actually had quite an interesting conversation

www.abenteuermedien.de...

These computers can be quite convincing at times, and with some computers learning from the conversations that they have with us, I wonder how long it will be before one can successfully manage to pass the Turing test, and what it would mean for the future. Who knows perhaps one day we will find computers posting on ATS!

ok guys, did someone put me on global ignore overnight or something????
out of the 64 people that viewed this , did anyone try chatting to these computers, and if so did you think that they were convincing at all?

No your not on Global.

Alan Turing was an interesting character.He worked at Bletchly House during WW2 breaking German codes including Enigma.

He was a closset Homosexual at a time in Britain when it was illegal and he committed suicide by injecting poison into an apple and eating it.(lots of symbolism there)

I'm sure if you do a search here you'll find more here on Alan Turing and the Turing Test as I remember discussing it here before.

pantha wrote:

"Who knows perhaps one day we will find computers posting on ATS!"

And how do you know that they aren't posing here already pantha....

Excuse me, time for my recharge session and RAM flushing!!

Seriously, an interesting read - when I have a free hour I'll have a go at conversing with jabberwock... It'll probably beat me into a pulp in any debate we enter!!

Thanks Jb1 I was starting to feel a bit lonely there, I thought that I was going to have to go and talk to Fred some more
I did try searching , I guess I just haven't got a proper grasp of the boolean search tool yet. I just found a thread on AI where the turing test was just mentioned in passing.
I just find it interesting to find out how computers can give the impression of intelligence , a little like some of the members on ATS. Perhaps they are already here

Originally posted by Genya

And how do you know that they aren't posing here already pantha....

lol you beat me to it Genya, I know there is one thread I've read lately where someone isn't really listening to what is being said perhaps they are just trying to give the impression of being intelligent. I won't mention a name though.

Originally posted by pantha
I know there is one thread I've read lately where someone isn't really listening to what is being said perhaps they are just trying to give the impression of being intelligent. I won't mention a name though.

*snickers*

I just spend a little bit talking to "Fred."
Boy, is he an idiot! Kept trying to tell me about mah-jong and hollering at me for cussing. I swear that software is set up to pull random things out of its hindquarters in response to any question it gets. I was starting to fear a massive data-dump if I continuted taunting it.

Hm.
Yeah, that is a lot like what you insinuated.

-B.

Fred was a disappointment and was actually a bit snippy with me. He seemed a bit stuck on the subject of "Star Trek" for some reason. I wanted to try Jabberwock but I can't get the page to come up. I'll try back later. The concept has me intrigued.

yeah I found that the jabberwock site has been down a few times.
here is another link to loads of other bots .

www.simonlaven.com...

I find that they don't really like talking about them selves that much and usually turn the conversation around to your likes and dislikes.
I think that jabberwock would seem more intelligent if it could keep a track of what direction a conversation was going in, as different responses from you will send it off on a tangent so it's not too hard to be fooled by it.

A friend of mine coded some 'bots on a Muck once (basically sort of a smart-alec bot) and got into a bit of trouble because the thing would wander (randomly) into areas and start arguing with people. Although a few knew there was something really odd going on, there were several of them who never figured out that it was a bot.

pretty unconvincing , tried the 2 of them. they repeat themselves out of confusion and look for keywords for eg.

i said "no # sherlock" out of sarcasm , in which case i got called watson for the rest of the duration and then because i asked questions it kept on going on about a pet or something?