Summary Of Keep Or Trash: The Future Of The Turing Test

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

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

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,