TURING TEST

Is conversational behavior shown by a naïve human being a good example of intelligent behavior? If a machine does as well in conversation as a human being to make you think that it is human, then many people will agree it is intelligent.

There is a lot of lore about the Turing Test, named after Alan Turing who defined it. The websitehttp://www.cs.vu.nl/~jdruiter/c/index.htmlgives a lot of information on this.

The Loebner Prize

You may also wish to readhttp://www.loebner.net/Prizef/loebner-prize.html describing the $100,000 Loebner Prize for the first person to win the Turing Test by creating a suitable computer program. There is also an annual prize to be won by the best entry that year. The website mentioned above gives considerable information on the annual prizes awarded so far. Current technology has not yet demonstrated successful artificial intelligence at the level of winning the $100,000 Prize.

There is a very interesting discussion between Shieber [Lessons from a Restricted Turing Test] and
Loebner [ http://www.loebner.net/Prizef/In-response.html ]. Shieber has argued that if there had been a prize for a flying machine before the relevant science had been understood, people would have spent time trying to use springs to make flying machines. Loebner answers this by referring to Mozart’s backside!
To quote Loebner
“When Mozart rode to Vienna in 1781 he wrote complaining of the pain the mail coach inflicted on his backside. (Mozart in Vienna, V.Braunbehrens, trans T. Bell Grove Weidenfield, NY 1990, p 17). This was a result, I must suppose, in part from poor suspension of the coach. The study of elasticity, stress, and strain did not result in a swift and straight arrival at understanding. Suppose a concerted effort had been made, early on, to fly using springs. Perhaps the concepts of stress and strain would have been invented sooner, along with advances in spring technology that would have been a boon to humanity, and Mozart’s buttocks”.
Three cheers to Loebner! My project suggestion in this posting deals with an idea related in spirit. Many practical and valuable things can be achieved using the experience of working with programs designed to take the Turing Test. To continue with the analogy, instead of making a flying machine, one of these efforts could lead to an understanding of how to make properly sprung mail coaches.

Chatterbots

Before I start off with my proposal, let me mention Chatterbots. The Internet era has created “bots” which are programs which behave like robots; including the Chatterbots” which carry out conversations with humans. The website http://www.a-i.com/ gives you access to “Alan”, an interesting chatterbot.

Good, now we are ready to discuss my project suggestion. The proposal below involves extending the test idea to a spoken language context, not to win the Loebner prize, but to create a system, which could serve a variety of people in a limited way. I will argue that there are many attractive reasons to use a speech interface in the context of a Turing Machine. I do not believe that this is a magical solution to the challenge of making a machine show intelligent behavior, but I do believe that many students of artificial intelligence (AI) and computer science would consider this a promising way to advance the tools available to those who work on AI. The idea of using a speech interface is not new. You can find examples among winning programs from the annual Loebner prize contests that offer you a text-to-speech interface.