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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 t

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

fchollet 12y ago
The difference between an employee doing work and one deceiving you into thinking they're doing work is simple: one produces value, the other does not. Here, no useful information can be extracted from this Eugene chatbot. It cannot perform any useful task a human could perform or answer any useful question a human could answer. Which is what I was talking about when I mentioned usefulness. As a side note, I recently made a question answering engine which, although not very advanced and certainly not attempting to pass for a human, can provide you with useful information when asked general knowledge questions: http://www.sphere-engineering.com/blog/quickanswers-io-semantic-question-answering-engine.html http://www.sphere-engineering.com/blog/quickanswers-io-seman... The Chinese room experiment is not a relevant reference here, because this Eugene chatbot is in no way "functionally equivalent" to a human being. It is not even attempting to implement intelligence.
- ThomPete 12y ago
  You keep assuming something about the turing test that is simply not the case. The Turing test has nothing to do with usefulness it doesn't even have to be correct. It just has to fool you into believing it's human. You are talking about your own metrics, fine but it's not what the test is about. I too hear Searles Chinese Room argument in your basic rant. And yes of course there are many useful things that can come out of something like this such as phishing attacks, hacking, honeypots even toys for kids.
- Too 12y ago
  Define "useful" I bet a black hat SEO optimizer would find tons of auto generated content very useful. That kind of content is designed exactly to deceive both users and search bots that it is of value.
  - cardine 12y ago
    Eugene would not do a good job auto generating content that is useful for SEO and there are existing tools which do a very effective job auto generating content for SEO purposes.
lotharbot 12y ago
> "If the machine can "deceive" you into thinking it's doing work, then it's doing work." That depends on how long the deception lasts. Do you think it's doing work for the first few seconds of interaction, for a few minutes, or do you never figure out the deception? From what I understand of the Turing test, the deception has to last at least for an entire conversation in order to count as "passing". This particular attempt doesn't appear to do that, at least not regularly.
StefanKarpinski 12y ago
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 experiment to argue against the position you're taking, right?
- ThomPete 12y ago
  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.

fchollet 12y ago

The difference between an employee doing work and one deceiving you into thinking they're doing work is simple: one produces value, the other does not. Here, no useful information can be extracted from this Eugene chatbot. It cannot perform any useful task a human could perform or answer any useful question a human could answer. Which is what I was talking about when I mentioned usefulness. As a side note, I recently made a question answering engine which, although not very advanced and certainly not attempting to pass for a human, can provide you with useful information when asked general knowledge questions: http://www.sphere-engineering.com/blog/quickanswers-io-semantic-question-answering-engine.html http://www.sphere-engineering.com/blog/quickanswers-io-seman... The Chinese room experiment is not a relevant reference here, because this Eugene chatbot is in no way "functionally equivalent" to a human being. It is not even attempting to implement intelligence.

ThomPete 12y ago
You keep assuming something about the turing test that is simply not the case. The Turing test has nothing to do with usefulness it doesn't even have to be correct. It just has to fool you into believing it's human. You are talking about your own metrics, fine but it's not what the test is about. I too hear Searles Chinese Room argument in your basic rant. And yes of course there are many useful things that can come out of something like this such as phishing attacks, hacking, honeypots even toys for kids.
Too 12y ago
Define "useful" I bet a black hat SEO optimizer would find tons of auto generated content very useful. That kind of content is designed exactly to deceive both users and search bots that it is of value.
- cardine 12y ago
  Eugene would not do a good job auto generating content that is useful for SEO and there are existing tools which do a very effective job auto generating content for SEO purposes.

lotharbot 12y ago

> "If the machine can "deceive" you into thinking it's doing work, then it's doing work." That depends on how long the deception lasts. Do you think it's doing work for the first few seconds of interaction, for a few minutes, or do you never figure out the deception? From what I understand of the Turing test, the deception has to last at least for an entire conversation in order to count as "passing". This particular attempt doesn't appear to do that, at least not regularly.

StefanKarpinski 12y ago

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 experiment to argue against the position you're taking, right?

ThomPete 12y ago
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.