4 ms·

> - The whole point of the name, "the imitation game", is to imitate a specific identity. The more precise an identity is, the more difficult it would be for an

by Ukv 2y ago

> - The whole point of the name, "the imitation game", is to imitate a specific identity. The more precise an identity is, the more difficult it would be for an imposter to imitate it. Turing chose male vs female, but modern choices have generalized it down to 'human or not' which is of course vastly easier to imitate than a more specific choice. Turing did introduce the concept of the game by having it played between a human man and human woman, with the man pretending to be a woman, but to my understanding this was just a stepping stone to move on to having the game played between machine and human. I don't think the gender specifity was meant to stick around beyond that initial introductory example. If you mean how he says things like "imitation of the behaviour of a man", that's most likely intended generally rather than specifically male (particuarly as the "machine takes the part of A", which was the man pretending to be a woman).

somenameforme 2y ago
Here [1] is the original paper. Though he does not state as such, I'm sure the idea of man vs woman was just an example. It could be anything, but I think it inherently must be something. Generalizing this down to being human or not greatly simplifies the test, because the identity aspect is basically just free information for the interrogator. With or without the identity, he could still ask the exact same questions. The only difference is the domain of viable answers is greatly limited with identities. And the more specific the identity, the more the real person will be able to reveal themselves, and the more difficulty the imposter will have impersonating them. [1] - https://redirect.cs.umbc.edu/courses/471/papers/turing.pdf https://redirect.cs.umbc.edu/courses/471/papers/turing.pdf
- Ukv 2y ago
  I agree that "Man pretending to be woman, vs real woman" is just an example, used to introduce the question in the form of a party game between humans. I see the "something" it is replaced by as "Machine pretending to be human, vs real human". I don't see indication that the machine must pretend to be human in addition to some other characteristic of the second player. I think the reason you see others as having "generalized it down" is that your interpretation is not apparent in the text. > the more specific the identity, the more the real person will be able to reveal themselves, and the more difficulty the imposter will have impersonating them. Definitely makes for a more difficult problem (arbitrarily difficult, even) and a potentially interesting extension. Currently to me it doesn't seem as insightful as Turing's original proposal - there's no more inherent human benchmark of 50%, for instance, since humans can also be bad at impersonating some specific characteristic.
  - somenameforme 2y ago
    With no need to actually imitate anything in particular, you could simply chop away everything except the most basic linguistic functions and claim you are a non-native preteen. And who's to say otherwise? In fact that's literally the exact "trick" that yet another mockery of the Turing Test used when claiming they'd overcome the Turing Test. In fact shall we not just take it to the next level? You're 5 years old - and simply respond by randomly pounding various keys on the keyboard on occasion. Boom - didn't see that coming, now did ya Turing? Passing the test will not be a benchmark because the test has been passed, but because of what passing the test ought entail. People often complain about shifting goalposts on AI, but that's not the issue. The issue is doing exactly what you're doing here and creating worthless goalposts to begin with. And so of course when you cross them, the first thing that happens is that they get inched forward somewhere closer to something reasonable, before you even have time to uncork the champagne. Why not simply skip this nonsense, and start with a reasonable goalpost to begin with? Because it's too hard? Well obviously - that's why it's a goal, and not next month's scrimmage point!
    - Ukv 2y ago
      > you could simply chop away everything except the most basic linguistic functions and claim you are a non-native preteen [...] You're 5 years old - and simply respond by randomly pounding various keys on the keyboard on occasion. Boom - didn't see that coming, now did ya Turing? Then the real human B would, on average, offer far more compelling evidence of personhood and the bot would fail the majority of the time. I don't see how this issue affects Turing's proposed version of the experiment. > The issue is doing exactly what you're doing here and creating worthless goalposts to begin with Claims from skeptics that "machines fundamentally cannot do X without real intelligence" are relatively easy to come by even now, which creates goalposts for intelligence by contrapositive (¬I => ¬X, so X => I). For me Turing's test is interesting because fully solving it implies achieving all (or at least, a very large class of) observable "X"s to the degree that current humans are capable of. If playing chess truly required intelligence, you could feed in chess moves and a machine that cannot play chess would (over a large enough experiment, so you get people who can and cannot play chess) offer less evidence than the average person. I believe the overall impact is a push towards either "something can behave exactly like it is intelligent without being intelligent" or "machines can be intelligent". Both are interesting and I feel increasingly common viewpoints. > Because it's too hard? Well obviously - that's why it's a goal, and not next month's scrimmage point! Because the goal should be meaningful - "find the factors of this absurdly large coprime" doesn't really say all that much about intelligence, and many other tests would only cover one particular idea of what intelligence is.

by Ukv 2y ago

somenameforme 2y ago

Here [1] is the original paper. Though he does not state as such, I'm sure the idea of man vs woman was just an example. It could be anything, but I think it inherently must be something. Generalizing this down to being human or not greatly simplifies the test, because the identity aspect is basically just free information for the interrogator. With or without the identity, he could still ask the exact same questions. The only difference is the domain of viable answers is greatly limited with identities. And the more specific the identity, the more the real person will be able to reveal themselves, and the more difficulty the imposter will have impersonating them. [1] - https://redirect.cs.umbc.edu/courses/471/papers/turing.pdf https://redirect.cs.umbc.edu/courses/471/papers/turing.pdf

Ukv 2y ago
I agree that "Man pretending to be woman, vs real woman" is just an example, used to introduce the question in the form of a party game between humans. I see the "something" it is replaced by as "Machine pretending to be human, vs real human". I don't see indication that the machine must pretend to be human in addition to some other characteristic of the second player. I think the reason you see others as having "generalized it down" is that your interpretation is not apparent in the text. > the more specific the identity, the more the real person will be able to reveal themselves, and the more difficulty the imposter will have impersonating them. Definitely makes for a more difficult problem (arbitrarily difficult, even) and a potentially interesting extension. Currently to me it doesn't seem as insightful as Turing's original proposal - there's no more inherent human benchmark of 50%, for instance, since humans can also be bad at impersonating some specific characteristic.
- somenameforme 2y ago
  With no need to actually imitate anything in particular, you could simply chop away everything except the most basic linguistic functions and claim you are a non-native preteen. And who's to say otherwise? In fact that's literally the exact "trick" that yet another mockery of the Turing Test used when claiming they'd overcome the Turing Test. In fact shall we not just take it to the next level? You're 5 years old - and simply respond by randomly pounding various keys on the keyboard on occasion. Boom - didn't see that coming, now did ya Turing? Passing the test will not be a benchmark because the test has been passed, but because of what passing the test ought entail. People often complain about shifting goalposts on AI, but that's not the issue. The issue is doing exactly what you're doing here and creating worthless goalposts to begin with. And so of course when you cross them, the first thing that happens is that they get inched forward somewhere closer to something reasonable, before you even have time to uncork the champagne. Why not simply skip this nonsense, and start with a reasonable goalpost to begin with? Because it's too hard? Well obviously - that's why it's a goal, and not next month's scrimmage point!
  - Ukv 2y ago
    > you could simply chop away everything except the most basic linguistic functions and claim you are a non-native preteen [...] You're 5 years old - and simply respond by randomly pounding various keys on the keyboard on occasion. Boom - didn't see that coming, now did ya Turing? Then the real human B would, on average, offer far more compelling evidence of personhood and the bot would fail the majority of the time. I don't see how this issue affects Turing's proposed version of the experiment. > The issue is doing exactly what you're doing here and creating worthless goalposts to begin with Claims from skeptics that "machines fundamentally cannot do X without real intelligence" are relatively easy to come by even now, which creates goalposts for intelligence by contrapositive (¬I => ¬X, so X => I). For me Turing's test is interesting because fully solving it implies achieving all (or at least, a very large class of) observable "X"s to the degree that current humans are capable of. If playing chess truly required intelligence, you could feed in chess moves and a machine that cannot play chess would (over a large enough experiment, so you get people who can and cannot play chess) offer less evidence than the average person. I believe the overall impact is a push towards either "something can behave exactly like it is intelligent without being intelligent" or "machines can be intelligent". Both are interesting and I feel increasingly common viewpoints. > Because it's too hard? Well obviously - that's why it's a goal, and not next month's scrimmage point! Because the goal should be meaningful - "find the factors of this absurdly large coprime" doesn't really say all that much about intelligence, and many other tests would only cover one particular idea of what intelligence is.