Turing Test Success

I believe that in the original formulation of the Turing Test the judges were asked to hold two conversations: one with a computer and one with a human. Afterwards they chose which of the two they believed to be the human. In that scenario, being identified as "human" more than 50% of the time would indeed make you "more human than human"; with a "perfectly human" program the test becomes essentially a coin-toss. In that context the 30% threshold makes a good deal of sense.

But in this variant, "Do you believe the entity you spoke with to be a human or a program?", a 100% threshold is theoretically achievable. That means you're entirely correct: a 51% vote of confidence is decidedly less human than human. Additionally the 30% threshold they've used is laughably low in this context. Without a control group, even an 100%-confidence outcome probably says more about the beliefs of the judges than the ability of the program to simulate a human.

I don't mean to take away from the no-doubt impressive achievement by the team behind Eugene. I just take issue with the hyperbole in its reporting. But, ya know, the media will be the media, and academics gotta get research grants.

Interesting post! Great insights I see in here..

Me: Do you have more hair on your head or on your eyelash? Goostman: If I say that I haven't more hair on my head or on my eye lash - will it satisfy your inquisitive mind? By the way, what's your occupation? I mean - could you tell me about your work?

This is not passing the Turing test by any stretch of the imagination.

I don't know exactly how Eugene works, but I am quite sure like most chat bots it simply reacts to keywords or preprogrammed patterns. Basically it's Eliza [0], but with more scripts. I believe most people here would not give it credit for winning an intelligence test.

There is actually more than one bot, which has been claimed to have passed the Turing Test before. Cleverbot is one of them [1]. There are also several competitions, but I believe the most reputable and long standing one is the Loebner Prize [2]. The bot that currently holds the Loeber Prize is Mitsuku [3].

Anyway, you can chat with Eugene at [4], I gave it a try. I believe there is one thing that the creators of Eugene got right. When chatting with other chat bots, I usually in a situation where the bot says something, I ask I followup question (like "Why?"), and it gives a generic answer like "Because I say so" or "I don't know". Eugene does the same but will ask a unrelated followup question right together with the response. That way at least there is not a weird pause in the conversation.

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ELIZA

[1] http://www.geekosystem.com/cleverbot-passes-turing-test/

[2] http://www.loebner.net/Prizef/loebner-prize.html

[3] http://www.mitsuku.com

[4] http://www.princetonai.com/bot/bot.jsp

I thought that was an obvious example of a computer system, as it was a labored and overly detailed description. I would have immediately flagged it as a computer system, and not a human.