Turing test

The Turing test is a proposal for a test of a machine's capability to perform human-like conversation. Described by Alan Turing in the 1950 paper "Computing machinery and intelligence", it proceeds as follows: a human judge engages in a natural language conversation with two other parties, one a human and the other a machine; if the judge cannot reliably tell which is which, then the machine is said to pass the test. It is assumed that both the human and the machine try to appear human. In order to keep the test setting simple and universal (to explicitly test the linguistic capability of some machine), the conversation is usually limited to a text-only channel such as a teletype machine as Turing suggested or, more recently, IRC.

Predictions and tests

Turing predicted that machines would eventually be able to pass the test. In fact, he estimated that by the year 2000, machines with 109 bits (about 119 MiB) of memory would be able to fool 30% of human judges during a 5-minute test. He also predicted that people would then no longer consider the phrase "thinking machine" contradictory. He further predicted that machine learning would be an important part of building powerful machines, a claim which is considered to be plausible by contemporary researchers in Artificial intelligence.

Related Topics:
Bits - MiB - Machine learning - Artificial intelligence

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By extrapolating an exponential growth of technology over several decades, futurist Ray Kurzweil predicted that Turing-capable computers would be manufactured around the year 2020, roughly speaking. See the Moore's Law article and the references therein for discussions of the plausibility of this argument.

Related Topics:
Exponential growth - Futurist - Ray Kurzweil - Moore's Law

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As of 2005, no computer has passed the Turing test as such. Simple conversational programs such as ELIZA have fooled people into believing they are talking to another human being, such as in an informal experiment termed AOLiza. However, such "successes" are not the same as a Turing Test. Most obviously, the human party in the conversation has no reason to suspect they are talking to anything other than a human, whereas in a real Turing test the questioner is actively trying to determine the nature of the entity they are chatting with. Documented cases are usually in environments such as Internet Relay Chat where conversation is sometimes stilted and meaningless, and in which no understanding of a conversation is necessary, are common. Additionally, many internet relay chat participants use English as a second or third language, thus making it even more likely that they would assume that an unintelligent comment by the conversational program is simply something they have misunderstood, and are also probably unfamiliar with the technology of "chat bots" and don't recognize the very non-human errors they make. See ELIZA effect.

Related Topics:
As of 2005 - ELIZA - AOLiza - Internet Relay Chat - ELIZA effect

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The Loebner prize is an annual competition to determine the best Turing test competitors. Although they award an annual prize for the computer system that, in the judges' opinions, demonstrates the "most human" conversational behaviour (with A.L.I.C.E. being a recent winner multiple times, and learning AI Jabberwacky in second), they have an additional prize for a system that in their opinion passes a Turing test. This second prize has not yet been awarded. The creators of Jabberwacky have proposed a personal Turing Test: the ability to pass the imitation test while attempting to specifically imitate the human player, with whom the AI will have conversed at length before the test. http://www.jabberwacky.com/s/PTT100605.pdf.

Related Topics:
Loebner prize - A.L.I.C.E. - Jabberwacky

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There is an ongoing $10,000 bet at the Long Bets Foundation between Mitch Kapor and Ray Kurzweil about the question whether a computer will pass a Turing Test by the year 2029. The bet specifies the Turing Test in some detail.

Related Topics:
Long Bets Foundation - Mitch Kapor - Ray Kurzweil - 2029

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