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My Conversation with “Eugene Goostman”

scottaaronson.com

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Re: My Conversation with “Eugene Goostman”

#71

Post by rntz »

ThomPete wrote: post #49

Many commentors seems to think that the turing test is a claim about computers achieving self awareness or consciousness. It's not. It is a test to see whether humans can distinguish between the "AI" and a human. There is no correct definition of AI here. This is no different than when a chess computers beats a human being. It doesn't matter that it does that by brute-force. What matters it that it beats the human. T…

In Turing's original paper, the Test is intended to be a "new form" of the question "can machines think?". It is explicitly a test of the machine's intelligence, not of humans'.

Re: My Conversation with “Eugene Goostman”

#72

Post by hyperpape »

TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #42
davidgerard wrote: post #7

The entire Turing test claim is Kevin Warwick's media hype. He issues a press release to this effect approximately annually. Basically, the way to tell if a claim related to artificial intelligence is rubbish is to search for the name "Kevin Warwick". This is what I wrote for his 2008 effort: http://newstechnica.com/2008/10/13/turing-test-won-with-arti...

You know, writing a chatbot that could pass the turing test might actually be very easy if you make it act like a deranged Internet troll. To make a chatbot that imitates someone specific might be easier still; I wish no ill-will to TempleOS (formerly Losethos), but I think I could quite easily write a bot that was indistinguishable from him.

That's a standard trick. It doesn't make it "easy", but it works to muddy the issue. There are annual turing test competitions and some bots use this trick. They're not the absolute best, but they do well.

Re: My Conversation with “Eugene Goostman”

#73

Post by cmiles74 »

JackC wrote: post #33

I had the “conversation” below with the version of Eugene Goostman available at http://default-environment-sdqm3mrmp4.elasticbeanstalk.com/ . It’s possible that there’s a more recent version somewhere else, but this is the only version I was able to access. Even then, the site was constantly down ... Setting aside whether this is the same version of the software, is Eugene CPU-constrained? The press release described…

Based on the article, I'd be very much surprised if a "supercomputer" was necessary. While the chatbot may have improved a bit since the referenced version, I'd be surprised if it was by much.

Re: My Conversation with “Eugene Goostman”

#74

Post by cmiles74 »

matnewton85 wrote: post #35
Morendil wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The idea of this is not "try to break the robot" Think of it this way. If you want to learn what constitutes strong chess play, will you learn best from playing a) yourself or b) a much stronger player? Having a "collaborative" exchange with a chatbot is of the same strength as playing chess with yourself, for the purposes of investigating what "thinking" consists of. The Turing Test is useful precisely when we are…

Ok, I think this is just a perspective thing. You're (most likely) coming from a CS background, I come from a user testing background. If someone sits me down and says "use my site, have a conversation with a 13 year old Ukrainian".. I start having a conversation with a 13 year old Ukrainian. Someone sits a CS major down with Eugene, the 13 year old Ukrainian, he'll drop references to AI reserch from the 60s. Somethi…

Chatbots seem like people when you stick to their script (or on of their conversation paths). Vary even a little and the whole charade is exposed.

Re: My Conversation with “Eugene Goostman”

#75

Post by ThomPete »

rntz wrote: post #71
ThomPete wrote: post #49

Many commentors seems to think that the turing test is a claim about computers achieving self awareness or consciousness. It's not. It is a test to see whether humans can distinguish between the "AI" and a human. There is no correct definition of AI here. This is no different than when a chess computers beats a human being. It doesn't matter that it does that by brute-force. What matters it that it beats the human. T…

In Turing's original paper, the Test is intended to be a "new form" of the question "can machines think?". It is explicitly a test of the machine's intelligence, not of humans'.

It test the machines intelligence under the same naive assumption that was held about beating humans in chess. It was a different time they thought about it differently.

Turing first made the test to ask whether computers can think but changed it to a much more concise and answerable question.

"Are there imaginable digital computers which would do well in the imitation game?"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_test

Re: My Conversation with “Eugene Goostman”

#76

Post by ThomPete »

StefanKarpinski wrote: post #67
ecopoesis wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the machine can "deceive" you into thinking it's doing work, then it's doing work. It doesn't matter if there's a man who speaks Chinese in the room, or if there's a bunch of rulebooks about Chinese, they're functionally equivalent. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_room

The point is that building chatbots doesn't get us any closer to being able to create a Chinese Room – Eugene isn't anything like a Chinese room, it's just a cheap imitation of one that doesn't fool anyone savvy, as Aaronson's post shows. Nor is there any reason to think that building more chatbots like Eugene will get us any closer to a Chinese Room. Also, you do realize that Searle proposed the Chinese Room thought…

Yes it does.

Searles position and example was however deeply flawed.

Of course the person in the room does not understand Chinese. Neither does the individual neuron in your brain.

A chat-bot is exactly a good example of a Chinese room.

Re: My Conversation with “Eugene Goostman”

#78

Post by murbard2 »

StefanKarpinski wrote: post #64
plaguuuuuu wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be interesting to run the AI against itself and have each version try to determine if the other is an AI.

That would actually be far more interesting than any of this nonsense. To try to determine whether the thing you're talking to is a bot or not, you have to construct some kind of model of it – try to explain its behavior. The ability to explain things is a genuine hallmark of intelligence, so building things that can try to model and explain the world around them would be real AI research.

That's what blogspam detection is all about

Re: My Conversation with “Eugene Goostman”

#79

Post by NAFV_P »

DanBC wrote: post #51
anonymfus wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

*> If I were an artificial computer Opposed to natural computers like humans? That is very interesting terminology.

That's terminology straight from Turing's paper introducing the game. Computers were people back then, as well as digital computers. And he talks about cloning a human not counting as a win for an intelligent machine.

> That's terminology straight from Turing's paper introducing the game.

Hi DanBC.

My choice of words was coincidental. I was not aware that Turing used the same terminology, so I am pleasantly surprised. Recently, I have been experiencing a lot of coincidences on HN, bizarre.

Re: My Conversation with “Eugene Goostman”

#80

Post by tragomaskhalos »

fchollet wrote: post #10

There is nothing about Eugene that is useful to the advancement of actual AI, to our understanding of intelligence. Advanced chatbots are a parlor trick, the same way that rabbit and hat tricks do not help us develop actual teleportation systems, however clever and convincing they might seem to credulous people. The difference between a trick and a technology, of course, is usefulness. Can your software do something…

Eliza with a knobs on. The attempt to pre-explain the kookiness of its answers as being due to the quirky personality of "Eugene" was just laughable.
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