(ELOG 10 for CS3790: Cognitive Science)
The Turing Test is an interesting idea. The construction is as follows: you put a person in one room, a computer in another, and then have them communicating with a third person, whom we call the interrogator. The interrogator then asks questions of both and tries, with this information alone, to guess which is the computer and which is the man. The computer’s goal is to communicate with the interrogator so effectively as to convince him that it is the person.
Note that to be fair with the computer, our communication medium needs to be something like a chat room, something that separates physical perception from intellectual perception. Still, the test is weighted heavily in favor of the interrogator, since the computer must be capable of processing and using natural language in answers, and the interrogator has a 50-50 chance of guessing against the computer anyway.
Still, Turing was convinced in 50 years time that a computer would be capable of pulling off this feat… He said this in 1950. It’d seem Turing was off a little bit.
Leave a Comment