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people have already chatted with an AI without noticing it was an AI an not a person I'm sure this have worked in some limited context where the human was not

by olavk 9y ago

people have already chatted with an AI without noticing it was an AI an not a person I'm sure this have worked in some limited context where the human was not actively trying to figure out if it was a human or AI. I mean, I have sometimes at a distance mistaken a mannequin for a human - that does not mean mannequins are now indistinguishable from humans. In the Turing tests the judge is active trying to discern if they are talking to a (adult, literate, mentally sound) human or an AI. AFAIK no AI have ever passed this. (Of course it is easy for a human to impersonate a bad AI by answering erratically, but that doesn't really prove anything.)

JoeAltmaier 9y ago
I'm not sure that masquerading as a normal human being is any kind of a bar for an AI to pass. How about, passing for an expert in a field e.g. medicine, investing, navigation? I'd much rather see my AI certified that way.
- olavk 9y ago
  Such a specialized AI would probably be more useful in practice, but that is not really what the Turing test is concerned with. The Turing test is a behaviorist approach to deciding the question if a computer "can think". In any case, it think it is much easier to create an AI specialized in a particular domain rather than a general "human-like" AI.
  - JoeAltmaier 9y ago
    There's a big dose of ethnocentrism (species-centrism?) in that. Why do we even want an AI that has human foibles, to the point its apparently as fallible as a human? Why is that part of the definition of 'thinking'?
    - olavk 9y ago
      Whether we want a computer which can think like a human is a separate question. The Turing tests is only concerned about whether we have such a computer. Of course you can redefine the word "thinking" however you want, and state that a GameBoy can think according to your definition. That does not really teach us anything though. The point of the Turing test is we have no objective definition or measure of whether some entity "can think like a human" or not, so the best we can do is to test if it appears to think like humans. That is not saying anything about whether is is "good" or "bad" to think like a human. I am certainly happy that computers and machines in general does not think like humans!
    - feral 9y ago
      You, and ideally everyone else commenting on this stuff on HN, should just have a very quick read of Turing's original paper before criticizing. It is very well thought-out: Alan Turing, 1950: "The game may perhaps be criticised on the ground that the odds are weighted too heavily against the machine. If the man were to try and pretend to be the machine he would clearly make a very poor showing. He would be given away at once by slowness and inaccuracy in arithmetic. May not machines carry out something which ought to be described as thinking but which is very different from what a man does? This objection is a very strong one, but at least we can say that if, nevertheless, a machine can be constructed to play the imitation game satisfactorily, we need not be troubled by this objection." The Turing test is a proposed test of sufficiency for thinking; not a test of necessity; its really framed pretty well in his original paper.
      - JoeAltmaier 9y ago
        I get it; the test is sufficient. But I remain troubled, as I'm not sure I even want an AI that thinks in that way (the same as a human). I make no more claim than that; the Turing test is a little interesting and quaint; but surely much better tests could be conceived of.
- GolDDranks 9y ago
  It's still a bar that no AI has passed yet. It's not hard to steer the discussion into directions where the difference between a human and an AI becomes evident. This is likely to be important because a common-sense reasoning ability that the current AIs lack is likely to also be useful in more specialized fields.

by olavk 9y ago

JoeAltmaier 9y ago

I'm not sure that masquerading as a normal human being is any kind of a bar for an AI to pass. How about, passing for an expert in a field e.g. medicine, investing, navigation? I'd much rather see my AI certified that way.

olavk 9y ago
Such a specialized AI would probably be more useful in practice, but that is not really what the Turing test is concerned with. The Turing test is a behaviorist approach to deciding the question if a computer "can think". In any case, it think it is much easier to create an AI specialized in a particular domain rather than a general "human-like" AI.
- JoeAltmaier 9y ago
  There's a big dose of ethnocentrism (species-centrism?) in that. Why do we even want an AI that has human foibles, to the point its apparently as fallible as a human? Why is that part of the definition of 'thinking'?
  - olavk 9y ago
    Whether we want a computer which can think like a human is a separate question. The Turing tests is only concerned about whether we have such a computer. Of course you can redefine the word "thinking" however you want, and state that a GameBoy can think according to your definition. That does not really teach us anything though. The point of the Turing test is we have no objective definition or measure of whether some entity "can think like a human" or not, so the best we can do is to test if it appears to think like humans. That is not saying anything about whether is is "good" or "bad" to think like a human. I am certainly happy that computers and machines in general does not think like humans!
  - feral 9y ago
    You, and ideally everyone else commenting on this stuff on HN, should just have a very quick read of Turing's original paper before criticizing. It is very well thought-out: Alan Turing, 1950: "The game may perhaps be criticised on the ground that the odds are weighted too heavily against the machine. If the man were to try and pretend to be the machine he would clearly make a very poor showing. He would be given away at once by slowness and inaccuracy in arithmetic. May not machines carry out something which ought to be described as thinking but which is very different from what a man does? This objection is a very strong one, but at least we can say that if, nevertheless, a machine can be constructed to play the imitation game satisfactorily, we need not be troubled by this objection." The Turing test is a proposed test of sufficiency for thinking; not a test of necessity; its really framed pretty well in his original paper.
    - JoeAltmaier 9y ago
      I get it; the test is sufficient. But I remain troubled, as I'm not sure I even want an AI that thinks in that way (the same as a human). I make no more claim than that; the Turing test is a little interesting and quaint; but surely much better tests could be conceived of.
GolDDranks 9y ago
It's still a bar that no AI has passed yet. It's not hard to steer the discussion into directions where the difference between a human and an AI becomes evident. This is likely to be important because a common-sense reasoning ability that the current AIs lack is likely to also be useful in more specialized fields.