Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Turing Test Success

reading.ac.uk

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 166 posts

Re: Turing Test Success

#101

Post by hanru »

dang wrote: post #48
raldi wrote: post #3

I appreciate HN's rule about brief, non-sensational submission titles, but perhaps this one's taken it to the point of absurdism.

It was the submitter's title, not a mod edit, if that matters. The submitter did a good job, because the rest of the title ("marks milestone in computing history") is certainly linkbait and arguably misleading. Having it there would likely have made this thread a lower-quality controversy than it currently is. HN threads are surprisingly sensitive to initial conditions. Edit: Oh, and considering how many fluff press…

It seems the submitter has passed your Turing test. ;)

Re: Turing Test Success

#102

Post by nine_k »

ghshephard wrote: post #99
lukeschlather wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That excerpt reads to me like writing, not conversation. Someone spent some time polishing it. I know people who can talk like that extemporaneously, but I'd wager 99% of native English speakers wouldn't pass if that's the bar.

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.

You would label be as a computer, then.

Re: Turing Test Success

#103

Post by xerophtye »

fchollet wrote: post #71
acchow wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your opinion is not universally accepted. (Perhaps not even mainstream?). There's an element of behaviorism which stretches back to Descartes - how can you know that I exist? That I think? You can only observe through my behavior; that my behavior mimics yours. How then can we judge machines any other way?

The Turing test only tests for mimicry in human conversation, not "intelligence" as measured through a behavioral framework. A better "Turing test" proposed a few years ago was, "develop a team of robots that play soccer so well they can win the World Cup". While not the best possible driver of AI research, the quest for such a goal would still drive AI research orders or magnitude better than "trick random people to…

>develop a team of robots that play soccer so well they can win the World Cup

How is this any better that "build a bot that can beat Chess Masters" ?? Well, apart from the part where this includes multiple agents, and swarm robotics, etc. But frankly, setting a game as a bar actually covers relatively less scope in my opinion. Conversational bot actually does cover a LOT of scope if you think about all the possible ways the conversation can be taken. In fact, we as humans use conversation to judge other humans' intelligence as well. E.g. job interviews.

Though perhaps an advanced turing test could include performance in a variety of social situations like...

- convince employers to hire you, - Convince a girl to go out with you - Convince a customer to buy something - Debates... (Presidential debates by AI would be interesting)

Re: Turing Test Success

#105

Post by NAFV_P »

codeulike wrote: post #43

When people imagine what a Turing Test conversation would look like, they frequently underestimate the conversation. I find Dennet's example of an imaginary Turing Test from Consciousness Explained to be a good counterexample: Judge: Did you hear about the Irishman who found a magic lamp? When he rubbed it a genie appeared and granted him three wishes. “I’ll have a pint of Guiness!” the Irishman replied and immediate…

I whacked Chinese Room's prose in LibreOffice, then performed a spellcheck. Most examples of written English that I see on the Internet contain mistakes, yet CR is pretty much perfect.

Re: Turing Test Success

#106

Post by dghf »

codeulike wrote: post #43

When people imagine what a Turing Test conversation would look like, they frequently underestimate the conversation. I find Dennet's example of an imaginary Turing Test from Consciousness Explained to be a good counterexample: Judge: Did you hear about the Irishman who found a magic lamp? When he rubbed it a genie appeared and granted him three wishes. “I’ll have a pint of Guiness!” the Irishman replied and immediate…

To address some of the other replies to this comment ("it would more convincing with spelling errorrs" &c.), Dennet isn't directly concerned with the Turing Test itself here: he's attacking the Chinese Room argument [1], the formulation of which he regards as cheating, and provides the quoted conversation to illustrate the limits of what a human manually translating input Chinese symbols to output Chinese symbols could actually achieve.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_room

Re: Turing Test Success

#107

Post by Sami_Lehtinen »

andreasvc wrote: post #77
acchow wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The first school of thought believes that AI can be achieved by mimicking real conscious beings It's important to note the true meaning behind this school of thought - that mimicry and "true" intelligence are actually equivalent. Behaviorists believe this, and the validity of the Turing Test along with it.

The wording of your comment reveals your bias towards the other school of thought, Strong AI. But what is "true" intelligence? I don't think anyone has a clear definition of this, and in reality it's all just a philosophical quagmire. An important distinction is whether mimicry is equivalent to "true" intelligence, or whether it should be treated as such, barring a better litmus test. With that in mind, taking a meth…

Strong AI wouldn't make same silly mistakes which people make all the time. So would the Strong AI need to be smart enough to play dumb to fool people? Because people are illogical, smart machines surely wouldn't be?

Re: Turing Test Success

#108

Post by testingit »

Spoken language is just a small part of overall communication. Today Turing Test should consist of not only speaking but simulating, perhaps by a streaming video, a professor in front of a class of wild students. He should strive to capture their attention, to gain their respect and interest, to understand their inner state of mind.

Speaking is only a way of getting into the stage. Once into the highlights you must prove you are a leader or, if you decide so, that you are able to gain the attention of your audience to emphasize something important that previously was not perceived as such. That is speaking is an art, is not about explaining a plot but about creating a story.

Re: Turing Test Success

#109

Post by codeulike »

ghshephard wrote: post #99
lukeschlather wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That excerpt reads to me like writing, not conversation. Someone spent some time polishing it. I know people who can talk like that extemporaneously, but I'd wager 99% of native English speakers wouldn't pass if that's the bar.

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.

Well OK, but if you had a conversation like that with a bot, would you be prepared to consider the bot as being conscious? Thats the deeper question that the Turing Test is really about, rather than human/not human.
Post reply on HN