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Response by Ray Kurzweil to chatbot Eugene Goostman “passing the Turing test”

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Re: Response by Ray Kurzweil to chatbot Eugene Goostman “passing the Turing test”

#61

Post by robotresearcher »

balls187 wrote: post #55
robotresearcher wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's not much wrong with the University of Reading. Kevin Warwick, on the other hand is a complex character who errs on the side of hype and unjustified self-publicity much too often. He is not taken very seriously in academic AI and robotics, except when he causes a collective face-palm with claims like this. The press release people at Reading, or pretty much anywhere else, do not have the skills to assess wheth…

You might say he is the Ken Rockwell of Computer Science.

Warwick is Professor of Cybernetics, not CS.

Don't get me wrong: cybernetics is for real (see Norbert Weiner). Just clarifying Warwick's field. He currently publishes stuff on brain-machine interfaces, mostly.

Re: Response by Ray Kurzweil to chatbot Eugene Goostman “passing the Turing test”

#62

Post by cardine »

ccozan wrote: post #45
drzaiusapelord wrote: post #28

The answers Ray got back are borderline embarrassing. They're designed to deflect the question by ignoring the request and asking another unrelated question or deflecting by humor. These are common ploys in faking AI chat. Hell, what 13 yo calls himself a "little boy?" I was in 8th grade at 13 and looking forward to high school. I can't imagine calling myself a "little boy" at an age when some of my peers were sexual…

Indeed embarrassing. Actually, I can't believe that they called this chat-bot in any way intelligent. On top of that, this level of chat is the same since 90s, how come nothing has changed? And anyway, text chatting is/will never be a measure of intelligence, the Turing test in this form should never be considered. You really need to live 13 years as a boy to be able to answer as one.

Not much has changed because the people, companies, and institutions capable of making such improvements are now focusing on things with actual real world application.

Re: Response by Ray Kurzweil to chatbot Eugene Goostman “passing the Turing test”

#63

Post by usumoio »

macspoofing wrote: post #48
ambler0 wrote: post #31

I think most people misunderstand the intent of Turing's paper in which he describes his eponymous test. I agree with Chomsky's reading, which he laid out in "Language & Thought": "There is a great deal of often heated debate about these matters in the literature of the cognitive sciences, artificial intelligence, and philosophy of mind, but it is hard to see that any serious question has been posed. The question of…

>Fooling people into mistaking a submarine for a whale doesn't show that submarines really swim Why not? Presumably part of the act of fooling would involve 'swimming' submarines. I think passing a __strong__ Turing test actually does say something about our brains, cognition, and consciousness. And by a 'strong Turing test', I don't mean dinky 5 minute tests with a "Ukrainian boy". Imagine you carry on a 20 year rel…

I agree. The only proof you have that I am a conscience being is that you believe that to be so because I conduct myself as one. You can't really prove that I am or am not conscience. You can only observe that I act like a conscience being.

Re: Response by Ray Kurzweil to chatbot Eugene Goostman “passing the Turing test”

#64

Post by ccozan »

jacquesm wrote: post #50
ccozan wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed embarrassing. Actually, I can't believe that they called this chat-bot in any way intelligent. On top of that, this level of chat is the same since 90s, how come nothing has changed? And anyway, text chatting is/will never be a measure of intelligence, the Turing test in this form should never be considered. You really need to live 13 years as a boy to be able to answer as one.

I've seen better in the 90's.

ELIZA comes from the top of my head, and did impress me at that time ( '94 ? ). Lately I found out it had a psychologist side in it, as per original design and the answering with a question.

Better? Maybe, maybe not. But after 20 years, to show no real progress at all? Baffling.

Re: Response by Ray Kurzweil to chatbot Eugene Goostman “passing the Turing test”

#65

Post by computator »

Kurzweil's and Mitch Kapor's rules on how to judge a Turing Test are well thought out ( * 1), but I'm finding that it's actually biased against the computer (and therefore unfair to Kurzweil). There's a significant chance that a computer with a breathtaking performance will lose by probability alone.

Look at this rule: The Computer will be deemed to have passed the “Turing Test Human Determination Test” if the Computer has fooled two or more of the three Human Judges into thinking that it is a human.

Suppose the Computer is absolutely perfect its responses (i.e., it should pass the Turing Test). The judges know that they're speaking to 3 humans and 1 computer, so if the judges are chatting with 4 equally-good subjects, they'll decide that one of the four is a computer on a whim. There's a chance that Kurzweil will lose just by arbitrariness.

It's like being asked to sample 4 glasses of wine to pick the worst. Unbeknownst to you, all 4 glasses have the same wine. Even though they're equally good, you'll reject one glass by some arbitrary measure. Maybe you felt an itch on your neck while drinking from the second glass, so that one is the bad wine.

( * 1) http://www.kurzweilai.net/a-wager-on-the-turing-test-the-rul...

Re: Response by Ray Kurzweil to chatbot Eugene Goostman “passing the Turing test”

#66

Post by ambler0 »

macspoofing wrote: post #48
ambler0 wrote: post #31

I think most people misunderstand the intent of Turing's paper in which he describes his eponymous test. I agree with Chomsky's reading, which he laid out in "Language & Thought": "There is a great deal of often heated debate about these matters in the literature of the cognitive sciences, artificial intelligence, and philosophy of mind, but it is hard to see that any serious question has been posed. The question of…

>Fooling people into mistaking a submarine for a whale doesn't show that submarines really swim Why not? Presumably part of the act of fooling would involve 'swimming' submarines. I think passing a __strong__ Turing test actually does say something about our brains, cognition, and consciousness. And by a 'strong Turing test', I don't mean dinky 5 minute tests with a "Ukrainian boy". Imagine you carry on a 20 year rel…

I think we agree. And I think Turing's point in choosing a conversation as the test was to pick something that would indicate the vast range of human experience. If a computer could pass a strong version of the test as you describe, then I would agree that we would have say, as you do, "if it looks like a duck, .... then it is a duck."

But I don't agree that it renders the concept of conciousness meaningless (or at least any more meangingless, depending on what you think about the concept now). On the contrary, I think we might have to say, "this computer is probably concious", and afford it all of the rights that we do for humans.

BTW I don't think either Turing or Chomsky would say that >Things like free will, love, or consciousness are apparently outside of the natural world

I obviously don't speak for either of them, but I'm pretty sure they both subscribe to the theory of causal determinism and computational theory of mind.

Re: Response by Ray Kurzweil to chatbot Eugene Goostman “passing the Turing test”

#67

Post by ddt »

macspoofing wrote: post #48
ambler0 wrote: post #31

I think most people misunderstand the intent of Turing's paper in which he describes his eponymous test. I agree with Chomsky's reading, which he laid out in "Language & Thought": "There is a great deal of often heated debate about these matters in the literature of the cognitive sciences, artificial intelligence, and philosophy of mind, but it is hard to see that any serious question has been posed. The question of…

>Fooling people into mistaking a submarine for a whale doesn't show that submarines really swim Why not? Presumably part of the act of fooling would involve 'swimming' submarines. I think passing a __strong__ Turing test actually does say something about our brains, cognition, and consciousness. And by a 'strong Turing test', I don't mean dinky 5 minute tests with a "Ukrainian boy". Imagine you carry on a 20 year rel…

My big takeaway from the Chomsky quote is that it's useless to ask if computers can think because one of the fundamental properties we associate with thinking is some biological/spiritual aspect. For a computer to "think", we'd need to redefine what we mean by think. And if we have to redefine what it means to think, why bother hailing it as an accomplishment to make a computer "think". The properties are incredibly important to our understanding of the world. The fact that we have different words for "think", "compute", and "calculate" gives some insight into the value we assign to the distinction as a culture. If those differentiations didn't exist, the problem of simulating cognition wouldn't change. What would change is our perception of the problem. If thinking, calculation, and computation all share the same word, it becomes a question of degrees of "thinking" rather than substantially different processes.

I don't think Chomsky is trying to elevate certain things outside of the laws of nature. He's describing how what we choose to differentiate changes our fundamental perceptions of those things. Submarines could "swim". They could also "read", but those words have a very specific set of properties associated with them.

Re: Response by Ray Kurzweil to chatbot Eugene Goostman “passing the Turing test”

#68

Post by robotresearcher »

fidotron wrote: post #27

Warwick is just an attention seeking fruitcake, and an utter embarrassment to the entire British computing ecosystem. This isn't some new revelation either. Quite why he's tolerated at all is beyond me. Kurzweil is being too kind.

More than tolerated:

http://www.kevinwarwick.com/achievements.htm

You can go a long way with the publicity, er, focus.

Re: Response by Ray Kurzweil to chatbot Eugene Goostman “passing the Turing test”

#70

Post by computator »

computator wrote: post #65

Kurzweil's and Mitch Kapor's rules on how to judge a Turing Test are well thought out ( * 1), but I'm finding that it's actually biased against the computer (and therefore unfair to Kurzweil). There's a significant chance that a computer with a breathtaking performance will lose by probability alone . Look at this rule: The Computer will be deemed to have passed the “Turing Test Human Determination Test” if the Compu…

Can someone please help with the probability calculation?

3 judges and 4 participants

What's the probability that any 2 or all 3 judges will pick a particular participant ("the computer") out of 4 at random?

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