8 ms·

By 2029 no computer or “machine intelligence” will have passed the Turing Test

55 points by fhinson 12y ago

onthefudge 12y ago
Unless they know about genderless no form-factors.
- SwellJoe 12y ago
  The only other search result for the phrase "genderless no form-factors" is an HN comment from four days ago, also by a brand new user (not the same username, but I'm guessing the same user). It is, as far as I can tell, a nonsense phrase. What are you trying to say, and can you say it in English?
ForHackernews 12y ago
> or The Kurzweil Foundation if Kurzweil wins. That modesty, though.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- tga_d 12y ago
  Mitch Kapor is one of the founders of the EFF; both charities are self-serving in that regard.
ForHackernews 12y ago
They made this bet in 2002, so we're almost halfway to 2029. Does anyone (other than Kurzweil) seriously think a Turning Test-passing machine is just over the horizon? (And no, contrived scenarios with computers pretending to be foreign children don't count[0]) [0] http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2014/06/10/did-eugene-goostman-pass-the-turing-test/ http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2014/06/10/did-eugene-goostman-p...
- posnet 12y ago
  But Kurzweil is banking on the exponential growth of technology. According to his reasoning (and using Moore's Law of 2x performance every 18 months, as a guideline) we are less than 1% of the way towards the goal (assuming 100% is passing the Turing test). Now I don't have any idea if he will be correct, or even what a machine that will pass the Turing test will be like. But if you accept the premise that technological advancement is on an exponential curve, half way in terms of progress will be much closer to 2029 than half way in time. (Note I am not saying that technology is exponential or that it is following Moore's law or that it will be exponential forever or that 2x every 18 months is fact, its simply an extension of Kurzweil reasoning to its logical conclusion.)
  - shoyer 12y ago
    Exponential improvements aren't very helpful if you're working on exponentially hard problems. Exponential growth of technology hasn't solved machine intelligence (by direct simulation) for essentially the same reason why it hasn't solved numerical weather prediction or made quantum computers pointless. To expand on weather prediction: you need an order of magnitude improvement in computer speed to make weather forecasts with the same quality one day earlier. So exponential growth of computing power means linear growth in terms of subjective benefit. To be fair, we don't understand the difficulty of modeling intelligence anywhere near as well as we understand the difficulty of modeling the weather. But, given the limits of our current abilities to simulate the brain, it seems reasonable to guess that similar principles could hold.
    - marcosdumay 12y ago
      What's exponentially hard about it? Talking like a human is a bounded problem, it has no margin for growing (or shrinking). Any kind of growth in capacity will help against it.
      - ForHackernews 12y ago
        Fair enough, but that's like saying "intergalactic travel is a bounded problem"
theVirginian 12y ago
The Turing Test is a thought experiment, not an actual test. No machine will ever pass because that is fundamentally a misunderstanding of the Turing Test.
- iLoch 12y ago
  What if we aren't real and only exist as software inside a machine?
- DSMan195276 12y ago
  Thank you for pointing this out. It always bugs me to no end when people talk about 'passing the Turing Test', it just shows a huge lack of understanding on what Turning was getting at. The important part of the Turing Test isn't whether or not we can build a computer to 'pass it', it's what is it that differentiates us from just being complex computers that can spit-out the right answer when asked, and if there actually is any difference. The question really is "If a computer can act exactly like a human, to the point where people can't tell the two apart, what exactly is the difference between that computer and a real human?". Most people would say that the computer can't "think" and a human can, but if the computer can shift bits around in such a way that it comes to the 'right' response, what's the difference between that and 'thinking'?
  - icebraining 12y ago
    That's the point of the thought experiment in the paper, but that thought experiment includes a description of an actual test that can be made, which is what people call the Turing Test.
  - newman8r 12y ago
    A fallacy is equating the ability to think alone with our human potential. It's not just thinking that has built human civilization. Coming up with the correct answer for any query is one thing - evolving from a single cell to manipulate our environment and having consciousness spontaneously emerge and then within a few thousand years discover many of the secrets of the universe and on the verge of becoming a god-like species if we don't destroy an entire planet first. When the machines can do that then we can compare apples to apples. Thinking is a nice feat and I think it's going to be solved in many of our lifetimes. It's definitely something I'd like to research more at some point. WE are the terminators - so... yeah.
jakobegger 12y ago
Can anybody point me to the papers where scientists have actually "reverse engineered (...) regions of the brain" or present "highly detailed mathematical models of (...) neurons"? As far as I know, research in those directions is nowhere near as sophisticated as Kurzweil tries to make us believe. The mathematical models for neurons I've seen may reproduce some firing statistics, but they are not at all suitable for actually modelling behavior of a system in response to a stimulus.
- T-A 12y ago
  http://www.neuron.yale.edu/neuron/ http://www.neuron.yale.edu/neuron/ http://www.artificialbrains.com/openworm http://www.artificialbrains.com/openworm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain_implant http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain_implant
  - jakobegger 12y ago
    I'm not sure what you are trying to say with those links. I know that people are working on mathematical models of neurons, it's just that the current models have little in common with real neuronal systems. The only systems that are described nicely are simple systems with very few neurons (eg. reflexes that involve two or three neurons). And more ambitious projects, like the Openworm project you linked to, can't seem to get past preliminary phases...
    - T-A 12y ago
      I'm not sure how you can claim "reflexes that involve two or three neurons" are state of the art or that OpenWorm "can't seem to get past preliminary phases". Neither http://www.openworm.org/science.html http://www.openworm.org/science.html nor http://www.i-programmer.info/news/105-artificial-intelligence/7985-a-worms-mind-in-a-lego-body.html http://www.i-programmer.info/news/105-artificial-intelligenc... look like a preliminary phase to me. That's a system of more than 300 neurons, fully mapped, simulated and working, both virtually and hooked up to real sensors and actuators.
      - 12y ago
karmacondon 12y ago
I was struck by the prescience and clarity of Mitch Kapor's writing. He correctly predicted that a computer would be able to win on Jeopardy [0], 9 years before the fact. And he understood that the Turing Test was more of a thought experiment than an actual test [1], which is why I assume he took the bet in the first place. Conversation is actually a rather poor measure of intelligence. I would say, show me a computer that can learn anything that it wasn't specifically programmed to learn. This doesn't mean unsupervised categorization or learning to play a video game. I'm talking about a scenario where programmers present their code or machine with no knowledge of what the task will be. Not something chosen from a known list of possibilities, but any task that a human could conceivably be taught to perform in less than an hour. Anything from writing a sonnet in iambic pentameter to assembling ikea furniture based on instructions. A true test of _general_ intelligence. I would take that long bet out to 2129, and beyond. I don't see software with that level of intellectual flexibility being written in our lifetimes, or the lifetimes of our children or their children. [0] "While it is possible to imagine a machine obtaining a perfect score on the SAT or winning Jeopardy..." [1] "... a skeptic about machine intelligence could fairly ask how and why the Turing Test was transformed from its origins as a provocative thought experiment by Alan Turing to a challenge seriously sought."
- icebraining 12y ago
  Well, indirectly, the Turing test does allow you to test for learning, as long as it can be taught during the period of time available for the interview and using a chat. Assembling furniture might be hard to test for, but you could certainly ask it to write a sonnet.
  - tim333 12y ago
    I wonder how the humans in the turing test would get on with sonnet writing. I imagine if they were, say computer scientists, rather poorly. I don't think I'd do terribly well at that. Looking just now at Turing's paper he actually deals with Sonnets and suggests the conversation might go: >Q: Please write me a sonnet on the subject of the Forth Bridge. >A : Count me out on this one. I never could write poetry. Now that I could probably do.
dnautics 12y ago
The turing test must have an adversarial component. E.g. For any competition with X entrants, the computer candidate must be compared against one of the other human entrant team member, randomly selected. If the other entrant is (correctly) identified as the human, a fraction of the year's prize, say 1/X, goes to the adversarial team, and the candidate is barred from winning that year.
halviti 12y ago
Isn't anyone else curious about this "long now foundation"? I mean for one thing the bet is just as much about the turing test as it is whether or not you believe this foundation is going to exist in 2029. It also seems like they take all the bet money and then invest it while they're waiting to pay out. Seems like a pretty sweet deal.
- tim333 12y ago
  The long now foundation are quite an interesting bunch, known mostly for their 10,000 year clock: "The Long Now Foundation itself is the brainchild of inventor and engineer Danny Hillis, who launched the non-profit to build the clock. The Long Now foundation has over 3,300 members who are supporting the project, but Bezos is by far the most prominent and seemingly deep-pocketed, kicking in a projected $42 million" I hope they'll be with us in 2029.
- wpietri 12y ago
  Hi! I'm a Long Now member, and a dozen years ago I was the person who wrote the Long Bets code. We actually host some related bets and predictions, including: "The original URL for this prediction will no longer be available in eleven years." http://longbets.org/601/ http://longbets.org/601/ "The Long Bets Foundation will no longer exist in 2104." http://longbets.org/137/ http://longbets.org/137/ Investing the money is definitely part of what makes this interesting. Thanks to compound interest, some truly large sums could be at stake by the time the bet is resolved. (We also couldn't do it any other way, as a number of the bettors are unlikely to be around when the bets are resolved.) The money, though, is not held directly by the Long Now. It's in a special account set up with The Farsight Fund of Capital Research and Management Company. That's mentioned here: https://longbets.org/about/ https://longbets.org/about/ http://longbets.org/faq/ http://longbets.org/faq/ As to whether it'll exist in 2029, I'd say the odds are good. The Turing bet is a 27-year bet and we're already nearly halfway there. But if you don't think so, I will be entirely glad to bet against you. ;-)
  - wpietri 12y ago
    Oh, and I encourage everybody to come by The Interval: http://theinterval.org/ http://theinterval.org/ The Long Now for years had a little museum space that got only a modest number of visitors. But conversation about the long term is their goal, and they realized that coffeehouses and bars are where a lot of good conversation happens, so they converted the museum into a cafe during the day and a bar at night. If you're ever in San Francisco, it's a great nerdy tourist stop. It's in Fort Mason, on the north edge of San Francisco between Fisherman's Wharf and the Golden Gate Bridge.
sushirain 12y ago
If a computer can convince judges that it is human, then it can also convince judges that it is sentient. If it is convincingly sentient, is it moral to program it?
ilaksh 12y ago
If you change it to a five minute interview instead of two hours then less than five years. Anyway it will happen pretty soon and then people will just say it wasn't a good test.
restalis 12y ago
The more I think about the Turing Test, the more flawed (or hackable) I see it. What if instead of improving the computer I go the other way around and I put a disabled human (like an autistic or something) behind the curtain? This may certainly exhibit a very unnatural model of thought and make the computer harder to identify. If however, such hack would be prevented by the fact that the judge is the one that chooses his human subject for the test, like they knowing each other to some degree, then the test becomes more of a challenge to recognize the specifics that one particular person may have in relations with not only computers but other humans as well!

55 points by fhinson 12y ago

onthefudge 12y ago

Unless they know about genderless no form-factors.

SwellJoe 12y ago
The only other search result for the phrase "genderless no form-factors" is an HN comment from four days ago, also by a brand new user (not the same username, but I'm guessing the same user). It is, as far as I can tell, a nonsense phrase. What are you trying to say, and can you say it in English?

ForHackernews 12y ago

> or The Kurzweil Foundation if Kurzweil wins. That modesty, though.

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
tga_d 12y ago
Mitch Kapor is one of the founders of the EFF; both charities are self-serving in that regard.

ForHackernews 12y ago

They made this bet in 2002, so we're almost halfway to 2029. Does anyone (other than Kurzweil) seriously think a Turning Test-passing machine is just over the horizon? (And no, contrived scenarios with computers pretending to be foreign children don't count[0]) [0] http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2014/06/10/did-eugene-goostman-pass-the-turing-test/ http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2014/06/10/did-eugene-goostman-p...

posnet 12y ago
But Kurzweil is banking on the exponential growth of technology. According to his reasoning (and using Moore's Law of 2x performance every 18 months, as a guideline) we are less than 1% of the way towards the goal (assuming 100% is passing the Turing test). Now I don't have any idea if he will be correct, or even what a machine that will pass the Turing test will be like. But if you accept the premise that technological advancement is on an exponential curve, half way in terms of progress will be much closer to 2029 than half way in time. (Note I am not saying that technology is exponential or that it is following Moore's law or that it will be exponential forever or that 2x every 18 months is fact, its simply an extension of Kurzweil reasoning to its logical conclusion.)
- shoyer 12y ago
  Exponential improvements aren't very helpful if you're working on exponentially hard problems. Exponential growth of technology hasn't solved machine intelligence (by direct simulation) for essentially the same reason why it hasn't solved numerical weather prediction or made quantum computers pointless. To expand on weather prediction: you need an order of magnitude improvement in computer speed to make weather forecasts with the same quality one day earlier. So exponential growth of computing power means linear growth in terms of subjective benefit. To be fair, we don't understand the difficulty of modeling intelligence anywhere near as well as we understand the difficulty of modeling the weather. But, given the limits of our current abilities to simulate the brain, it seems reasonable to guess that similar principles could hold.
  - marcosdumay 12y ago
    What's exponentially hard about it? Talking like a human is a bounded problem, it has no margin for growing (or shrinking). Any kind of growth in capacity will help against it.
    - ForHackernews 12y ago
      Fair enough, but that's like saying "intergalactic travel is a bounded problem"

theVirginian 12y ago

The Turing Test is a thought experiment, not an actual test. No machine will ever pass because that is fundamentally a misunderstanding of the Turing Test.

iLoch 12y ago
What if we aren't real and only exist as software inside a machine?
DSMan195276 12y ago
Thank you for pointing this out. It always bugs me to no end when people talk about 'passing the Turing Test', it just shows a huge lack of understanding on what Turning was getting at. The important part of the Turing Test isn't whether or not we can build a computer to 'pass it', it's what is it that differentiates us from just being complex computers that can spit-out the right answer when asked, and if there actually is any difference. The question really is "If a computer can act exactly like a human, to the point where people can't tell the two apart, what exactly is the difference between that computer and a real human?". Most people would say that the computer can't "think" and a human can, but if the computer can shift bits around in such a way that it comes to the 'right' response, what's the difference between that and 'thinking'?
- icebraining 12y ago
  That's the point of the thought experiment in the paper, but that thought experiment includes a description of an actual test that can be made, which is what people call the Turing Test.
- newman8r 12y ago
  A fallacy is equating the ability to think alone with our human potential. It's not just thinking that has built human civilization. Coming up with the correct answer for any query is one thing - evolving from a single cell to manipulate our environment and having consciousness spontaneously emerge and then within a few thousand years discover many of the secrets of the universe and on the verge of becoming a god-like species if we don't destroy an entire planet first. When the machines can do that then we can compare apples to apples. Thinking is a nice feat and I think it's going to be solved in many of our lifetimes. It's definitely something I'd like to research more at some point. WE are the terminators - so... yeah.

jakobegger 12y ago

Can anybody point me to the papers where scientists have actually "reverse engineered (...) regions of the brain" or present "highly detailed mathematical models of (...) neurons"? As far as I know, research in those directions is nowhere near as sophisticated as Kurzweil tries to make us believe. The mathematical models for neurons I've seen may reproduce some firing statistics, but they are not at all suitable for actually modelling behavior of a system in response to a stimulus.

T-A 12y ago
http://www.neuron.yale.edu/neuron/ http://www.neuron.yale.edu/neuron/ http://www.artificialbrains.com/openworm http://www.artificialbrains.com/openworm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain_implant http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain_implant
- jakobegger 12y ago
  I'm not sure what you are trying to say with those links. I know that people are working on mathematical models of neurons, it's just that the current models have little in common with real neuronal systems. The only systems that are described nicely are simple systems with very few neurons (eg. reflexes that involve two or three neurons). And more ambitious projects, like the Openworm project you linked to, can't seem to get past preliminary phases...
  - T-A 12y ago
    I'm not sure how you can claim "reflexes that involve two or three neurons" are state of the art or that OpenWorm "can't seem to get past preliminary phases". Neither http://www.openworm.org/science.html http://www.openworm.org/science.html nor http://www.i-programmer.info/news/105-artificial-intelligence/7985-a-worms-mind-in-a-lego-body.html http://www.i-programmer.info/news/105-artificial-intelligenc... look like a preliminary phase to me. That's a system of more than 300 neurons, fully mapped, simulated and working, both virtually and hooked up to real sensors and actuators.
    - 12y ago

karmacondon 12y ago

I was struck by the prescience and clarity of Mitch Kapor's writing. He correctly predicted that a computer would be able to win on Jeopardy [0], 9 years before the fact. And he understood that the Turing Test was more of a thought experiment than an actual test [1], which is why I assume he took the bet in the first place. Conversation is actually a rather poor measure of intelligence. I would say, show me a computer that can learn anything that it wasn't specifically programmed to learn. This doesn't mean unsupervised categorization or learning to play a video game. I'm talking about a scenario where programmers present their code or machine with no knowledge of what the task will be. Not something chosen from a known list of possibilities, but any task that a human could conceivably be taught to perform in less than an hour. Anything from writing a sonnet in iambic pentameter to assembling ikea furniture based on instructions. A true test of _general_ intelligence. I would take that long bet out to 2129, and beyond. I don't see software with that level of intellectual flexibility being written in our lifetimes, or the lifetimes of our children or their children. [0] "While it is possible to imagine a machine obtaining a perfect score on the SAT or winning Jeopardy..." [1] "... a skeptic about machine intelligence could fairly ask how and why the Turing Test was transformed from its origins as a provocative thought experiment by Alan Turing to a challenge seriously sought."

icebraining 12y ago
Well, indirectly, the Turing test does allow you to test for learning, as long as it can be taught during the period of time available for the interview and using a chat. Assembling furniture might be hard to test for, but you could certainly ask it to write a sonnet.
- tim333 12y ago
  I wonder how the humans in the turing test would get on with sonnet writing. I imagine if they were, say computer scientists, rather poorly. I don't think I'd do terribly well at that. Looking just now at Turing's paper he actually deals with Sonnets and suggests the conversation might go: >Q: Please write me a sonnet on the subject of the Forth Bridge. >A : Count me out on this one. I never could write poetry. Now that I could probably do.

dnautics 12y ago

The turing test must have an adversarial component. E.g. For any competition with X entrants, the computer candidate must be compared against one of the other human entrant team member, randomly selected. If the other entrant is (correctly) identified as the human, a fraction of the year's prize, say 1/X, goes to the adversarial team, and the candidate is barred from winning that year.

halviti 12y ago

Isn't anyone else curious about this "long now foundation"? I mean for one thing the bet is just as much about the turing test as it is whether or not you believe this foundation is going to exist in 2029. It also seems like they take all the bet money and then invest it while they're waiting to pay out. Seems like a pretty sweet deal.

tim333 12y ago
The long now foundation are quite an interesting bunch, known mostly for their 10,000 year clock: "The Long Now Foundation itself is the brainchild of inventor and engineer Danny Hillis, who launched the non-profit to build the clock. The Long Now foundation has over 3,300 members who are supporting the project, but Bezos is by far the most prominent and seemingly deep-pocketed, kicking in a projected $42 million" I hope they'll be with us in 2029.
wpietri 12y ago
Hi! I'm a Long Now member, and a dozen years ago I was the person who wrote the Long Bets code. We actually host some related bets and predictions, including: "The original URL for this prediction will no longer be available in eleven years." http://longbets.org/601/ http://longbets.org/601/ "The Long Bets Foundation will no longer exist in 2104." http://longbets.org/137/ http://longbets.org/137/ Investing the money is definitely part of what makes this interesting. Thanks to compound interest, some truly large sums could be at stake by the time the bet is resolved. (We also couldn't do it any other way, as a number of the bettors are unlikely to be around when the bets are resolved.) The money, though, is not held directly by the Long Now. It's in a special account set up with The Farsight Fund of Capital Research and Management Company. That's mentioned here: https://longbets.org/about/ https://longbets.org/about/ http://longbets.org/faq/ http://longbets.org/faq/ As to whether it'll exist in 2029, I'd say the odds are good. The Turing bet is a 27-year bet and we're already nearly halfway there. But if you don't think so, I will be entirely glad to bet against you. ;-)
- wpietri 12y ago
  Oh, and I encourage everybody to come by The Interval: http://theinterval.org/ http://theinterval.org/ The Long Now for years had a little museum space that got only a modest number of visitors. But conversation about the long term is their goal, and they realized that coffeehouses and bars are where a lot of good conversation happens, so they converted the museum into a cafe during the day and a bar at night. If you're ever in San Francisco, it's a great nerdy tourist stop. It's in Fort Mason, on the north edge of San Francisco between Fisherman's Wharf and the Golden Gate Bridge.

sushirain 12y ago

If a computer can convince judges that it is human, then it can also convince judges that it is sentient. If it is convincingly sentient, is it moral to program it?

ilaksh 12y ago

If you change it to a five minute interview instead of two hours then less than five years. Anyway it will happen pretty soon and then people will just say it wasn't a good test.

restalis 12y ago

The more I think about the Turing Test, the more flawed (or hackable) I see it. What if instead of improving the computer I go the other way around and I put a disabled human (like an autistic or something) behind the curtain? This may certainly exhibit a very unnatural model of thought and make the computer harder to identify. If however, such hack would be prevented by the fact that the judge is the one that chooses his human subject for the test, like they knowing each other to some degree, then the test becomes more of a challenge to recognize the specifics that one particular person may have in relations with not only computers but other humans as well!