From: Mark Steven Heyman (markheyman@infoproconsulting.com)
Date: Wed Oct 20 2004 - 02:32:43 BST
Jim,
On 18 Oct 2004 at 22:39, Jim Ledbury wrote:
Turing test was coined c. 60 years ago to try to get people to think
about the problem of thinking machines. I think we have to think a
little more specifically now, like can they understand the halting
problem and how do we test for this.
msh says:
I think a well defined Turing could still be useful, despite the age
and intention of the test. Don't know if you saw Blade Runner, but
it's about a guy who's job is to find and destroy some pretty
convincing human-impersonating cyborgs called Replicants. Most he
can spot with ten or so questions, till he comes across one played by
Sean Young who takes more than 100 questions to give it up, so to
speak. Seems like if you could build one to handle a few hundred
thousand questions that would get it through a normal human life-span
undetected.
As for the HP, I'm not sure what you mean by understand it. Just
that the computer would recognize it's faced with an undecidable
problem and say so? Like in War Games (I'm in a movie mood) when
Joshua is forced to play Tic-Tac-Toe against himself. He plays
faster and faster, then, rather than loop, or hang, or melt down, he
stops and calmly says: "Strange game. The only way to win, is not
to play." Since the underlying metaphor in that case was nuclear
warfare, I'd say that was one fully aware machine.
jim:
I haven't a clue whether something reasonably AI-ish can be built in
my lifetime, but I won't be asking it into how it feels if this
should happen: perhaps the element of emotion is intrinsic to what
we would accept as intelligence; maybe we won't recodnise something
without emotion.
msh:
Yeah, but we can't even be sure we're dealing with genuine emotion
when it comes to some more or less certifiable human beings. We
could program a tear or a fit of rage, but how do we program love?
Later,
Mark Steven Heyman (msh)
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