Jacob Ingram
Dr Barnes
First Engagements
29 August 2016
Keep or Trash: The Future of the Turing Test In The Most Human Human, an autobiography by Brian Christian, Christian outlines his journey of passing the Turing test as the “most human human”. The Turing test, says Graham Oppy who wrote an article in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, is “most properly used to refer to a proposal made by [Alan]Turing (1950) as a way of dealing with the question whether machines can think”(Oppy and Graham 1). In Christian’s autobiography, his goal was to win the Loebner Prize, given to those who can pass the Turing Test, as the most human human. In 1950 when Alan Turing created the Turing Test he could only dream of the computers we have now. He predicted
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He claims most of the criticism of the Turing test should just be ignored. He states, “ Perhaps what philosophers in the field of artificial intelligence need is not simply a test for intelligence but rather a theory of intelligence” (French 2). In other words, philosophers in artificial intelligence do not need a test of intelligence, yet first they need a theory of what intelligence really is. French uses an example to explain his thinking known as On Nordic Seagulls. Its premise is crucial to understanding his claim. On an island where the only flying animals are Seagulls, one day two philosophers are trying to figure out what flying is all …show more content…
Philosophers of artificial intelligence are trying to prove something they do not understand, with a test that was not meant to be used in such a way.
On the other hand, there are many people who critique the Turing Test, and believe it should be thrown out completely. Perhaps the most prominent critique is the test is too easy. Many argue the test can be passed by fooling the judges very well (Watt 2). With a human panel of judges, it could be very easy to sway them one way or another. Perhaps the human they were chatting with made a spelling error, the judge would then assume that is the human, so by default, the other must be the computer, regardless of how intelligent it may be. So, human error, and bias are both potential flaws in the test.
Take, for example, a recent machine that passed the Turing Test. A chatbot named Eugene Goostman programmed to be a thirteen year old Ukrainian boy who considered English a second language. At just thirteen the bot could have been seen as being immature, and lacking intelligence that could trick the judges. Elizabeth Lopatto of “The Daily Beast” does not think Eugene really passed The Turing Test. She claims, “[the fact] Eugene was programmed to be a non-native English speaker gave it an advantage; similarly that it was meant to be 13. We expect different things from pubescent boys whose first language isn’t English, compared to adult humans raised with the language.” So,
Carr describes the way our brains have changed as a consequence of using media. He later reports that when new or improved technology enters our lives, we begin to take on the qualities of those technologies, because it changes our “intellectual technologies”. He also uses the analogy of a clock, presenting the idea that we eat, work, sleep, and rise based on what time of day it is, instead of listening to our own senses. Carr then uses the claim from a 1936 British mathematician named Alan Turing that computing systems are subsuming most of our other intellectual technologies such as our map and our clock, our printing press and our typewriter, our calculator and our telephone, and our radio and our television. Likewise, he explains how the internet assumes what we are thinking and injects its context with hyperlinks, blinking ads, headlines, and other propaganda.
AI or artificial intelligence is not a modern concept, but rather a field of research that dates back to the mid-twentieth century. More recently though, privately owned Open AI has created a chatbot that uses artificial intelligence to respond to human formed questions. Gaining a public interest, Chat GPT satisfactorily passed a UPENN Wharton Business Exam, ranking notable scores in the English section, but unsatisfactory levels in the math section. When tasked with comparing the principles of the transcendentalists with Christopher Mccandless from Into the Wild, GPT produces an unsatisfactory essay. Although Chat GPT compares the transcendentalist lifestyle of Christopher Mccandless and the Transcendentalists logically, many of the arguments
Alan Turing: The Enigma is a scientific biography of one of the most brilliant minds in history. Andrew Hodges provides a detailed account of Alan’s life and shows his various contributions to history, mathematics, science etc. It also shows how instead of giving him an exceptional status he was forced to live a horrid life that ultimately led him to commit suicide. Andrew Hodges is a British mathematician, which helped him give a clear insight in Alan Turing’s life and his theories. The book opens up by describing Alan’s life in Britain and his family background.
What this means is the things that are being continuously made are changing our critical thinking skills. Thompson central claim is that computers are not as smart as humans, but once you have been using them over a certain amount of time you seem to get better at working them and that’s what really makes you more efficient in using them. The point that I don’t agree with Carr on is “Their thoughts and actions fell scripped, as if they're following the steps of an algorithm (p.328.)” I don’t agree with Carr’s argument here because he’s emphasizing that human thoughts are being scripted and we don’t think about things critically, but not all of our thinking
Thus, the CR proves that computers cannot understand language. Furthermore, my argument supports Searle’s (1980) claim that computers cannot explain human cognition, as they cannot attain knowledge for they are incapable of intelligence. It is impossible for a computer to explain human cognition when it is incapable of performing those very same abilities. Therefore, strong artificial intelligence is
In his essay “Minds, Brains, and Programs”, John R. Searle argues that a computer is incapable of thinking, and that it can only be used as a tool to aid human beings or can simulate human thinking, which he refers to as the theory of weak AI (artificial intelligence). He opposes the theory of strong AI, which states that the computer is a mind and can function similarly to a human brain – that it can reason, understand, and be in different cognitive states. Searle does not believe a computer can think because human beings have programmed all the functions it is able to perform, and that computers can only compute (transform) the information it is given (351ab¶1). Searle clarifies the meaning of understanding as he uses it by saying that an
If Wilder gave the Turing Test to one of Hathaway’s robot family members, she would fail because she lacks a conscience. The interrogator would be able to tell that each family member is not human. The Turing Test, when used to detect human from robot, relies on an interrogator identifying which of the players is human and which is machine. The family members lack the awareness to answer all questions in a way that would trick the interrogator. This lack of awareness is apparent when Bradburry describes the wife coming out of the hut and “for no reason at all… looks at the sky, her hands up” (462).
Based upon the analysis, Parnas’ article is geared more towards people involved in the field of Artificial Intelligence where Eldridge’s article is geared towards people who are not necessarily knowledgeable about Artificial Intelligence yet are interested to learn more about the topic. Throughout the article, Parnas maintains the skeptical attitude towards Artificial Intelligence, literally ending with “Devices that use heuristics to create the illusion of Intelligence present a risk we should not accept” (Parnas, 6). Eldridge on the other hand, maintains a positive attitude throughout the article despite the shortcomings of AI. Together, both authors provide compelling arguments for and against Artificial
In a world of vastly evolving technology, artificial intelligence is becoming more talked about. There is a lot of controversy of whether artificial intelligence is actually, intelligent, and therefore conscious enough to make choices based on free will. A test of intelligence is the Turing Test. However in the film Ex Machina, the machine, Ava, is not hidden from the person determining whether or not she is intelligent.
The Turing test has become the most widely accepted test of artificial intelligence and the most influential. There are also considerable arguments that the Turing test is not enough to confirm intelligence. Legg and Hutter (2007) cite Block (1981) and Searle (1980) as arguing that a machine may appear intelligent by using a very large set of
Artificial Intelligence is the field within computer science to explain some aspects of the human thinking. It includes aspects of intelligence to interact with the environment through sensory means and the ability to make decisions in unforeseen circumstances without human intervention. The beginnings of modern AI can be traced to classical philosophers' attempts to describe human thinking as a symbolic system. MIT cognitive scientist Marvin Minsky and others who attended the conference
Turing proved himself to be a valuable genius and his contributions to designing the Bombe were significant during World War II, but he encountered disgrace when authorities revealed he was homosexual. Two years after he was convicted of “gross indecency”, he committed suicide by ingesting a lethal
Rise of Artificial Intelligence and Ethics: Literature Review The Ethics of Artificial Intelligence, authored by Nick Bostrom and Eliezer Yudkowsky, as a draft for the Cambridge Handbook of Artificial Intelligence, introduces five (5) topics of discussion in the realm of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and ethics, including, short term AI ethical issues, AI safety challenges, moral status of AI, how to conduct ethical assessment of AI, and super-intelligent Artificial Intelligence issues or, what happens when AI becomes much more intelligent than humans, but without ethical constraints? This topic of ethics and morality within AI is of particular interest for me as I will be working with machine learning, mathematical modeling, and computer simulations for my upcoming summer internship at the Naval Surface Warfare Center (NSWC) in Norco, California. After I complete my Master Degree in 2020 at Northeastern University, I will become a full time research engineer working at this navy laboratory. At the suggestion of my NSWC mentor, I have opted to concentrate my master’s degree in Computer Vision, Machine Learning, and Algorithm Development, technologies which are all strongly associated with AI. Nick Bostrom, one of the authors on this article, is Professor in the Faculty of Philosophy at Oxford University and the Director at the Future of Humanity Institute within the Oxford Martin School.