Comment Re:Bots in the wild != controlled experimentation (Score 1) 331
Your 'experiment' is most certainly not the imitation game. It is a pathetic attempt to 'dumb down' the Turing Test so that Dr. Wallace's creation, ALICE, can appear smarter.
Perhaps a better name for it might be "The Idle Chatter Game."
Turing was quite explicit in describing the 'original' imitation game. Turing wrote:
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"It is played with three people, a man (A), a woman (B), and an interrogator (C) who may be of either sex. The interrogator stays in a room apart front the other two. The object of the game for the interrogator is to determine which of the other two is the man and which is the woman. He knows them by labels X and Y, and at the end of the game he says either "X is A and Y is B" or "X is B and Y is A." The interrogator is allowed to put questions to A and B thus:
C: Will X please tell me the length of his or her hair?
Now suppose X is actually A, then A must answer. It is A's object in the game to try and cause C to make the wrong identification. His answer might therefore be:
"My hair is shingled, and the longest strands are about nine inches long."
In order that tones of voice may not help the interrogator the answers should be written, or better still, typewritten. The ideal arrangement is to have a teleprinter communicating between the two rooms. Alternatively the question and answers can be repeated by an intermediary. The object of the game for the third player (B) is to help the interrogator. The best strategy for her is probably to give truthful answers. She can add such things as "I am the woman, don't listen to him!" to her answers, but it will avail nothing as the man can make similar remarks.
We now ask the question, "What will happen when a machine takes the part of A in this game?" Will the interrogator decide wrongly as often when the game is played like this as he does when the game is played between a man and a woman? These questions replace our original, "Can machines think?"
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Alan Turing "Computing and Machine Intelligence"
Note well what Turing wrote: "The object of the game for the interrogator is to determine which of the other two is the man and which is the woman."
Note that in the "original" imitation game the judge is quite aware of what is going on; that he or she must choose one of the two as the woman, and that the judge must ask the best questions he or she can think of and must evaluate the answers as best he or she can. In the Turing Test one simply replaces one of the humans with a machine.
Turing is describing what is techically known as "The Method of Paired Comparisons." This requires that a judge be forced to chose one of two options. In the "original" imitation game the object is to chose the woman from the pair man/woman. In the "Turing Test" it is to chose the human from the pair human/machine. If the judge can't tell, then operationally we may say that the computer is doing whatever the human is doing, ie. acting "intelligent."
The essential points of the test are:(A) there are three entities, (1) a human (2) a machine and (3)a judge (B) the judge knows that there is a test in progress, and (C) the human must convince the judge that he or she is the human while the computer must convince the judge that it is the human. The sex of the human doesn't matter - at one point Turing discusses playing the game with a blind man.
Any other interpretation of the test is doltish, it renders the affair meaningless, and Turing was not a dolt.
Perhaps a better name for it might be "The Idle Chatter Game."
Turing was quite explicit in describing the 'original' imitation game. Turing wrote:
---------
"It is played with three people, a man (A), a woman (B), and an interrogator (C) who may be of either sex. The interrogator stays in a room apart front the other two. The object of the game for the interrogator is to determine which of the other two is the man and which is the woman. He knows them by labels X and Y, and at the end of the game he says either "X is A and Y is B" or "X is B and Y is A." The interrogator is allowed to put questions to A and B thus:
C: Will X please tell me the length of his or her hair?
Now suppose X is actually A, then A must answer. It is A's object in the game to try and cause C to make the wrong identification. His answer might therefore be:
"My hair is shingled, and the longest strands are about nine inches long."
In order that tones of voice may not help the interrogator the answers should be written, or better still, typewritten. The ideal arrangement is to have a teleprinter communicating between the two rooms. Alternatively the question and answers can be repeated by an intermediary. The object of the game for the third player (B) is to help the interrogator. The best strategy for her is probably to give truthful answers. She can add such things as "I am the woman, don't listen to him!" to her answers, but it will avail nothing as the man can make similar remarks.
We now ask the question, "What will happen when a machine takes the part of A in this game?" Will the interrogator decide wrongly as often when the game is played like this as he does when the game is played between a man and a woman? These questions replace our original, "Can machines think?"
--------
Alan Turing "Computing and Machine Intelligence"
Note well what Turing wrote: "The object of the game for the interrogator is to determine which of the other two is the man and which is the woman."
Note that in the "original" imitation game the judge is quite aware of what is going on; that he or she must choose one of the two as the woman, and that the judge must ask the best questions he or she can think of and must evaluate the answers as best he or she can. In the Turing Test one simply replaces one of the humans with a machine.
Turing is describing what is techically known as "The Method of Paired Comparisons." This requires that a judge be forced to chose one of two options. In the "original" imitation game the object is to chose the woman from the pair man/woman. In the "Turing Test" it is to chose the human from the pair human/machine. If the judge can't tell, then operationally we may say that the computer is doing whatever the human is doing, ie. acting "intelligent."
The essential points of the test are:(A) there are three entities, (1) a human (2) a machine and (3)a judge (B) the judge knows that there is a test in progress, and (C) the human must convince the judge that he or she is the human while the computer must convince the judge that it is the human. The sex of the human doesn't matter - at one point Turing discusses playing the game with a blind man.
Any other interpretation of the test is doltish, it renders the affair meaningless, and Turing was not a dolt.
