5 ms·

Lust and the Turing test

32 points by samclemens 11y ago

facepalm 11y ago
Aren't there IRC bots already that successfully convince conversation partners to give them their credit card numbers?
- lmm 11y ago
  There are some, with certain (low) success rates. Expectations on IRC are weaker than those for an in-person conversation though; many people are inattentive or have limited English skills. I read an interesting excerpt from http://www.amazon.com/The-Most-Human-Artificial-Intelligence/dp/0307476707 http://www.amazon.com/The-Most-Human-Artificial-Intelligence... , arguing that the Turing test would become much more interesting once the humans started playing to win.
- cousin_it 11y ago
  Yeah. There are also bots that bring people to orgasm, and bots that hypnotize people over a text channel. I suspect that we might get bots that win AI-box experiments (convince a human gatekeeper to type the phrase "I let you out") long before we get "true" artificial intelligence. People are just too exploitable.
  - schoen 11y ago
    Wow, having an AI-box chatterbot would be quite a thing. This may not be exactly the site for this discussion, but... When Eliezer did the famous AI-box experiments, there was a precondition that the human is supposed to accept claims by the AI to have demonstrated specific abilities (like curing cancer, solving math problems, or disclosing technical data about itself). Is it worth imagining a "nightmare difficulty" AI-box experiment where humans don't have to take the AI's word for it about anything outside of the text channel? Are there humans (or will there be chatterbots) that can win under those conditions too? How about against a more diverse set of conversation partners, with a wider range beliefs and attitudes toward AIs? How about if the AI's tactics don't have to be kept secret? (I'm not trying to minimize the significance of what Eliezer accomplished in those demonstrations, just curious about the prospects for even-more-difficult variants.)
one-more-minute 11y ago
I suspect that passing the Turing test doesn't actually correlate well with having human-like AI. The thing about the Turing test is that it's just too hard. Getting a machine to convincingly pretend to be human is like getting a human to convincingly pretend to be another human – you'd have to answer questions about life and emotional experiences you'd never had, and actually, most people who try that won't hold up to a good interrogator. Add to that the fact that you build a theory of human minds largely by drawing on your experience of your own mind – an AI without experience can only draw on the information it's given. A machine that can empathise despite that is well beyond human intellectual capability already. To put it another way: Even if we assume that a human-level AI has exactly human-like thinking, it's going to be pretty damn obvious if you're talking to a human who was literally born yesterday, so the AI still fails the test.
- fsk 11y ago
  I'm having a hard time finding humans who can pass the Turing Test. Try explaining to someone "Taxation is theft!" or "Inflation is theft!" and watch their brain shut down. It'd be really hard to get an AI to emulate human insanity accurately.
toolslive 11y ago
horny humans are easily fooled: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natachata http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natachata
- jordigh 11y ago
  In a past job, we had a service that would receive natural-language queries about movies and respond with movie times and locations. Some men were convinced that the responses were generated by a female human (this was in Spanish, so I know of their assumptions based on grammatical gender) and started trying to chat up our bot. The logs were simultaneously hilarious and sad. I repeat: our bot just responded with movie times. Men were trying to get laid with it. :-( :-)
jordigh 11y ago
Ex Machina is a work of fiction. It says a lot more about its authors than it says anything about humans, artificial intelligence, or sex. In this case, it says that the authors really think female bots are about sex and male bots do not necessarily have to be about sex. http://www.wired.com/2015/04/ex-machina-turing-bechdel-test/ http://www.wired.com/2015/04/ex-machina-turing-bechdel-test/ The only example of a sexualised male bot in fiction I can think of is Gigolo Joe in AI, and maybe Schwarzennegers' insistence on being nude in Terminator scenes. Chappie, Johnny 5, the Iron Giant, HAL 9000, the nameless robots in the I, Robot movie; none of them had to put up with being a sex object. There is overwhelmingly a huge skew towards sexualised fembots, to the point where being sex objects is their usual definining characteristic in fiction, whereas other male or ambiguous bots have a chance to explore a larger philosophical world in fiction.
- unwind 11y ago
  You need to see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_Humans http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_Humans, then. It definitely has male robots playing the sex object role.
- facepalm 11y ago
  I can't think of that many movies with sexualised female robots, either - although I suppose if you have a "female robot" it will probably sexy/attractive to begin with, otherwise what makes it female? (Does male/female even make sense for robots???). I think you exaggerate the problem. Also, even if a female robot is sexualized, it doesn't mean that it can't explore "a larger philosophical world" at the same time. For example WALL-E was in love with the female robot, but the female robot was still cool sampling worlds for ecological recovery etc.
- Frozenlock 11y ago
  "In this case, it says that the authors really think female bots are about sex and male bots do not necessarily have to be about sex." Wait, what? --- Spoilers --- If anything, the authors think of humans (more specifically men in the movie) as being all about sex. Ava plays the seduction game because she(it) knows humans are susceptible to it. I'm a machine, have google-like knowledge of human interaction, have a nice artificial body, and I know I can deceive everyone simply by looking defenseless. What's the most straightforward way to obtain what I want? To tell everyone to fuck off? No, not really.... The way she(it) acted was the cold and logical thing to do.

32 points by samclemens 11y ago

facepalm 11y ago

Aren't there IRC bots already that successfully convince conversation partners to give them their credit card numbers?

lmm 11y ago
There are some, with certain (low) success rates. Expectations on IRC are weaker than those for an in-person conversation though; many people are inattentive or have limited English skills. I read an interesting excerpt from http://www.amazon.com/The-Most-Human-Artificial-Intelligence/dp/0307476707 http://www.amazon.com/The-Most-Human-Artificial-Intelligence... , arguing that the Turing test would become much more interesting once the humans started playing to win.
cousin_it 11y ago
Yeah. There are also bots that bring people to orgasm, and bots that hypnotize people over a text channel. I suspect that we might get bots that win AI-box experiments (convince a human gatekeeper to type the phrase "I let you out") long before we get "true" artificial intelligence. People are just too exploitable.
- schoen 11y ago
  Wow, having an AI-box chatterbot would be quite a thing. This may not be exactly the site for this discussion, but... When Eliezer did the famous AI-box experiments, there was a precondition that the human is supposed to accept claims by the AI to have demonstrated specific abilities (like curing cancer, solving math problems, or disclosing technical data about itself). Is it worth imagining a "nightmare difficulty" AI-box experiment where humans don't have to take the AI's word for it about anything outside of the text channel? Are there humans (or will there be chatterbots) that can win under those conditions too? How about against a more diverse set of conversation partners, with a wider range beliefs and attitudes toward AIs? How about if the AI's tactics don't have to be kept secret? (I'm not trying to minimize the significance of what Eliezer accomplished in those demonstrations, just curious about the prospects for even-more-difficult variants.)

one-more-minute 11y ago

I suspect that passing the Turing test doesn't actually correlate well with having human-like AI. The thing about the Turing test is that it's just too hard. Getting a machine to convincingly pretend to be human is like getting a human to convincingly pretend to be another human – you'd have to answer questions about life and emotional experiences you'd never had, and actually, most people who try that won't hold up to a good interrogator. Add to that the fact that you build a theory of human minds largely by drawing on your experience of your own mind – an AI without experience can only draw on the information it's given. A machine that can empathise despite that is well beyond human intellectual capability already. To put it another way: Even if we assume that a human-level AI has exactly human-like thinking, it's going to be pretty damn obvious if you're talking to a human who was literally born yesterday, so the AI still fails the test.

fsk 11y ago
I'm having a hard time finding humans who can pass the Turing Test. Try explaining to someone "Taxation is theft!" or "Inflation is theft!" and watch their brain shut down. It'd be really hard to get an AI to emulate human insanity accurately.

toolslive 11y ago

horny humans are easily fooled: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natachata http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natachata

jordigh 11y ago
In a past job, we had a service that would receive natural-language queries about movies and respond with movie times and locations. Some men were convinced that the responses were generated by a female human (this was in Spanish, so I know of their assumptions based on grammatical gender) and started trying to chat up our bot. The logs were simultaneously hilarious and sad. I repeat: our bot just responded with movie times. Men were trying to get laid with it. :-( :-)

jordigh 11y ago

Ex Machina is a work of fiction. It says a lot more about its authors than it says anything about humans, artificial intelligence, or sex. In this case, it says that the authors really think female bots are about sex and male bots do not necessarily have to be about sex. http://www.wired.com/2015/04/ex-machina-turing-bechdel-test/ http://www.wired.com/2015/04/ex-machina-turing-bechdel-test/ The only example of a sexualised male bot in fiction I can think of is Gigolo Joe in AI, and maybe Schwarzennegers' insistence on being nude in Terminator scenes. Chappie, Johnny 5, the Iron Giant, HAL 9000, the nameless robots in the I, Robot movie; none of them had to put up with being a sex object. There is overwhelmingly a huge skew towards sexualised fembots, to the point where being sex objects is their usual definining characteristic in fiction, whereas other male or ambiguous bots have a chance to explore a larger philosophical world in fiction.

unwind 11y ago
You need to see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_Humans http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_Humans, then. It definitely has male robots playing the sex object role.
facepalm 11y ago
I can't think of that many movies with sexualised female robots, either - although I suppose if you have a "female robot" it will probably sexy/attractive to begin with, otherwise what makes it female? (Does male/female even make sense for robots???). I think you exaggerate the problem. Also, even if a female robot is sexualized, it doesn't mean that it can't explore "a larger philosophical world" at the same time. For example WALL-E was in love with the female robot, but the female robot was still cool sampling worlds for ecological recovery etc.
Frozenlock 11y ago
"In this case, it says that the authors really think female bots are about sex and male bots do not necessarily have to be about sex." Wait, what? --- Spoilers --- If anything, the authors think of humans (more specifically men in the movie) as being all about sex. Ava plays the seduction game because she(it) knows humans are susceptible to it. I'm a machine, have google-like knowledge of human interaction, have a nice artificial body, and I know I can deceive everyone simply by looking defenseless. What's the most straightforward way to obtain what I want? To tell everyone to fuck off? No, not really.... The way she(it) acted was the cold and logical thing to do.