Submission + - Why the Turing Test is Not an Adequate Way to Calculate Artificial Intelligence (ibtimes.co.uk)
concertina226 writes: You may have heard that a supercomputer succeeded in passing the infamous Turing Test over the weekend at a Royal Society competition, but scientists say this is not really a milestone for artificial intelligence at all.
One of the founding fathers of modern computing, in 1950, wartime code breaker Alan Turing published a paper considering the question "Can machines think?" In the paper, Turing mentioned the word "test", and stated that he believed that by the year 2000, computers might be able to be programmed to imitate humans so well that they would be able to fool an "average interrogator" for five minutes.
"He [made] predictions about the size, memory and speed of computers that are surprisingly accurate, and he thought that by the year 2000, 30% [of people] would be unable to tell which was which," Aaron Sloman, a professor of artificial intelligence and cognitive science at University of Birmingham tells IBTimes UK.
"Now, he didn't say that this would prove that machines are intelligent. He said that many people have published arguments about [the fact that machines can't think], and he decided to knock down each one.
"He only set up the test to provide a framework for refuting those arguments. He called it the "imitation game" and lots of people started referring to it as a test, but if you read the paper, it's clear that he doesn't think that this can be sensibly provided."
One of the founding fathers of modern computing, in 1950, wartime code breaker Alan Turing published a paper considering the question "Can machines think?" In the paper, Turing mentioned the word "test", and stated that he believed that by the year 2000, computers might be able to be programmed to imitate humans so well that they would be able to fool an "average interrogator" for five minutes.
"He [made] predictions about the size, memory and speed of computers that are surprisingly accurate, and he thought that by the year 2000, 30% [of people] would be unable to tell which was which," Aaron Sloman, a professor of artificial intelligence and cognitive science at University of Birmingham tells IBTimes UK.
"Now, he didn't say that this would prove that machines are intelligent. He said that many people have published arguments about [the fact that machines can't think], and he decided to knock down each one.
"He only set up the test to provide a framework for refuting those arguments. He called it the "imitation game" and lots of people started referring to it as a test, but if you read the paper, it's clear that he doesn't think that this can be sensibly provided."