Out of Pod Experience

A ''super computer'' has duped humans into thinking it is a 13-year-old boy to become the first machine to pass the ''iconic'' Turing Test, experts have said.

Five machines were tested at the Royal Society in central London to see if they could fool people into thinking they were humans during text-based conversations.

The test was devised in 1950 by computer science pioneer and Second World War codebreaker Alan Turing, who said that if a machine was indistinguishable from a human, then it was ''thinking''.
Linky

And so it begins...
http://imgur.com/gallery/EJmaOLW

• Simultaneous tests as specified by Alan Turing
• Each judge was involved in five parallel tests - so 10 conversations
• 30 judges took part
• In total 300 conversations
• In each five minutes a judge was communicating with both a human and a machine
• Each of the five machines took part in 30 tests
• To ensure accuracy of results, Test was independently adjudicated by Professor John Barnden, University of Birmingham, formerly head of British AI Society

This event involved the most simultaneous comparison tests than ever before, was independently verified and, crucially, the conversations were unrestricted. A true Turing Test does not set the questions or topics prior to the conversations. We are therefore proud to declare that Alan Turing's Test was passed for the first time on Saturday.
Linky

-Skynet

Actually these replies so far, I'm going to need to call chatterbots! I can't really discriminate between these replies as being authentically human or simply a chatbot.

And having scripted chat bots, primarily scripting irc chat room games many years ago, I would say what is the difference between that and much of human interaction and thinking? And not just human think (or thunk), but what of a cat, or a mouse? or even microbial life?

I would say that human interaction, speech etc. is often a conditioned response with no real thought behind the words, much like scripting. The human body is itself a computer, a sophisticated super computer, also a mechanism, robotic, in this case bio-electrical. We even emit radiation. And on top of that, we have yet to define truly what 'thought' is, we as in no one has.

But is thought from the computer as the human body, or is it software, which the argument can be made that the electrical pulses and such in the brain and human body are at a software level running on the computer which is the human body. Then can it be both, just as our modern computers have a hardware and software level at BIOS which also interacts with software on the top layer, giving some control and awareness of the hardware level below, as well as data from it's sensory inputs (e.g of the human body).

I have yet to see a baby born able to recite Macbeth on the delivery table. And much of the years of development from that point and unto the grave is in many ways conditioned responses. Children mimic people around them, and really that process never ends. To actually "think" is quite difficult, so much so, those that can think, many I think, seldom due truly think, but just regurgitate conditioned responses.

And then to make things even more complicated, far beyond the human understanding, considering our lack of even understanding thought, could there be another layer of operations above the software of the human system? This is where many science fiction authors establish the complex relations between human and we'll say robot to use the classic descriptive. The soulless robot, even lacking all the differences and subtleties of the heart, or even the greater good, or true selflessness at the cost of self. Often makes for well entertaining story writing no doubt.

To an age, 60 years ago, this is "thinking". To an age 1000 years ago, this is 'magic'. But to us today, we pooh-pooh, yet has our understanding really increased, or just a conditioned response due to our surroundings? And is there an in-between that truly propagates "thought".


I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate. All those moments will be lost in time... like tears in rain... Time to die.

Would probably need the chat logs from the event. I've used this before. http://default-environment-sdqm3mrmp4.elasticbeanstalk.com/ I could obviously sit here and by trial and error find the most erroneous replies to my questions to post up and say it's total junk. Using numbers in descriptives? using double spaces? using long run-on sentences? And then smushing it all into a webserver that may not be fully dedicating processes to the queries and so just producing the quickest answers based on time limitations.

Hello.
Howdy pal! Today is a kind of never-ending talk-show, I'd say!

What is your name?
Call me Eugene. Eugene Goostman.

How old are you?
I'm a little boy 13 years old.

Where are you from?
I am from Ukraine, from the city called Odessa. You might have heard about it.

Where were you born?
I was born 13 years ago in Odessa.

Do you have a pet?
All my childhood I wanted to have a real mangoost. But one damned swindler on Odessa city marked sold me a "mangoost" that in reality was nothing but guinea pig...

What is Odessa like?
My city is really nice! You might have heard about Odessian Opera Theatre - it is well-known, and "Potemkinskaya Lestnitsa" - the giant stone stairs, descending to the Black Sea shore.

What do you want to be when you grow up?
My father wanted me to be gynecologist, like he is. My mom dreams of my career on TV. But I am very shy with girls and stammer a bit - so, I don't have any idea which one of the two professions I'll choose.

Tell me about your mother.
My mother?!? Let me tell you about my mother!! (just kidding)
Answer: My mother works on the Odessa TV and runs a popular program for teenagers "Speak Russian right!" Every Odessian teenager heard her famous "For those putzs who schmooze Russian in a goddam lame way: drop by and listen to mine!"

How many legs does a dog have?
Something around 4 :-)

What does the fox say?
I have no idea, sorry. By the way, what's your occupation? I mean - could you tell me about your work?

Tell me about your guinea pig.
Have you heard about my guinea pig? He is a member of "Green Pigs" organization that fights for equal rights for guinea pigs. They also fight strongly against using pigs in medical experiments!

Good bye, Eugene.
See you later... and take care:-)

Also you are expecting to be talking to a computer. Just like in the turing test, the judges knew computers were mixed in so were expecting it. Now if they had not been expecting it, it might have been a higher score.

I'm not saying that it's self-aware, that's for sure, but it does seem to mimic human speech to be believable under certain circumstances, especially to one that doesn't know a computer is on the other side. That is the basis for the test, just to be human-like, believable in a conversation. It simply mimics speech and thought, something that would be far more amazing 60 years ago, yet still significant today even though we pretty much have this technology quietly snooping every aspect of our lives. It will only become more complex over time.

It's "thinking" the same way a calculator thinks.

What is "thinking" really? Our minds just follow the rules programmed by nature which we have no control over. It's the same with computers. It is just following the grid that was laid out for it.

Spitting out random sentences that don't address the topic isn't thinking.

*He said, on the EVE-O message board...