Turing tests

[pmb]

When people aren't trying to screen out people vs. non-people, then we have many many instances of computers successfully passing themselves off as people and having long conversations with unwitting strangers who never caught on. If I told you that a particular AIM account was actually a perl script designed to pass the Turing test, and, when you initiated a chat with that account it said "No, man. That's just one of my friends playing a trick on me - I'm totally real, and that's totally a hoax", how could it convince you of its humanity without resorting to out-of-band methods "call me on the phone" or "check out my webpage"?

If you can't think of a method, then I submit that computers have already passed the Turing test.

Comments

[olstad.livejournal.com]

I tend to use a lot of colloquialisms and punny conversation. I've never used AIM and I haven't used ytalk in a long time, but I think that's true in my written conversation as well... are AIs up to speed on such things these days?

[pmb.livejournal.com]

Computers aren't very funny, but they pick up colloquialisms well - after all, all they know is what you tell them, so tell them your colloquialisms once, and they will know them forever.

Their wordplay abilities tend to be directly proportional to the amount of data on which they were trained, and inversely proportional to the breadth of subject material they are trained on. Also, puns generally require some knowledge of pronunciation and the semantics of the area under discussion - both of which computers are simply abysmal at.

Also, they do pretty much suck at chatting, it's just that our requirements for chatting online are so low. Chat conersations are atrocious - you think you've seen bad grammar and spelling and annoying abbreviations in emails and livejournal? You ain't seen nothing compared to the grammarial wasteland that is IM. So perhaps it's like Misuba said above - it's not that they could pass it, it's that we would fail it.