Machines Almost Pass Mass Turing Test

dewilso4 writes "Of the five computer finalists at this year's Loebner prize Turing Test, at least three managed to fool humans into thinking they were human conversationalists. Ready to speak about subjects ranging from Eminem to Slaughterhouse Five and everything in between, these machines are showing they we're merely a clock cycle away from true AI. '... I was fooled. I mistook Eugene for a real human being. In fact, and perhaps this is worse, he was so convincing that I assumed that the human being with whom I was simultaneously conversing was a computer.' Another of the entrants, Jabberwacky, can apparently even woo the ladies: 'Some of its conversational partners confide in it every day; one conversation, with a teenaged girl, lasted 11 hours.' The winning submission this year, Elbot, fooled 25% of judges into thinking he was human. The threshold for the $100K prize is 30%. Maybe next year ..."

30% is no Turing test.

[Hatta]

For a real Turing test, the computer must be declared human as often as humans are, and declared a computer as often as computers are.

Still some way to go

[SimonGhent]

From The Guardian's article:

"Let's talk about religion or politics. How is the government doing?" "I'm a protestant." Oh, really? Which denomination? "I was raised as a Protestant." Then, "Judge This very minute, I am a protestant; Go ahead?"

On the other half of the screen, a faceless music fan ("I like a lot of Radiohead, Stereophonics, Led Zep etc") admitted he or she hadn't watched either the England match or X Factor last night ("Haha, Top Gear's more my style"). It was pretty clear which one was a real person. And which one the computer.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/oct/13/artificialintelligenceai-computing [guardian.co.uk]

Though this is quite interesting:

The event's credibility was hardly aided by the insistence of Hugh Loebner, the prize's American sponsor, that he had no interest in the result and had only set up the competition 18 years ago to promote his firm's roll-up plastic lighted portable disco dance floors.

Makes sense - John McCain is a cylon ..

[tomhudson]

http://www.429truth.com/2008/09/01/john-mccain-is-a-cylon/ [429truth.com]
http://cmpalmer.blogspot.com/2008/03/john-mccain-is-he-cylon.html [blogspot.com] http://www.adampieniazek.com/politics/battlestar-politica/ [adampieniazek.com]

Or watch their election video http://tighroslin2008.com/ [tighroslin2008.com]

Here is the link they forgot to include in the sto

[The Cisco Kid]

http://www.chatterboxchallenge.com/ [chatterboxchallenge.com]

Although the site is using some broken CSS that causes the text to render too far off to the right side, at leas in FF3

Re:Apparently Geeks Should.....

[gnick]

...the fact that Jabberwacky held an 11 hour conversation with a teenage girl is pretty astonishing. Obviuosly, a conversation of that nature is going to be all about emotion - not logic, reason or an empirical display of intelligence...

I don't find it nearly as mind-blowing. Have you talked with a teenage girl since you've reached adulthood? It's a conversation only in the sense that there are two people both forming words. Here are a couple of guidelines that are incredibly useful if you want to have a 'conversation' with a teenage girl:
1) Agree with everything.
2) Try to pick up on here tone and answer with either 'Oh that rocks!' or more frequently 'Dude, that sucks!'
3) If she's got a bad situation that can be easily resolved by simple action, avoid giving useful advice. Fixing what's screwed up in her life will limit her supply of drama and any attempt to interfere will be met with hostility and logic that can be most generously described as irrational and most accurately described as delusional. Just ignore the obvious and refer to (1) and (2).
(4) All modern trends are immensely cool and will never go out of style. Spending all available income on clothes, make-up, and upgrading your 3-month-old cell phone is perfectly reasonable. The only downside is that her parents won't give her more money or a credit card so that she can have the same things that 'everyone else in her school' has.

Hope that helps. I spent the weekend with my niece and successfully took a short nap while learning all about why everything in her life is so unfair and retaining my status as an understanding uncle. ZZzzzz...

Note: I've found that (1) and (3) are useful for pretty much any emotion-related discussion with the fairer sex. YMMV.

Doesn't add up

[mathmathrevolution]

I think you mean the computer may be declared a computer as often as humans are, and must be declared human as often as humans are. Otherwise if computers were declared computers 90% of the time and humans were declared humans 90% of the time then it would be mathematically impossible for any computer to pass the turing test.

Re:The other half of the conversation

[porcupine8]

I had the exact same experience. When I finally got annoyed and told it "You wouldn't pass my Turing test," it spit out some explanation of what a turing test is.

Re:Figures

[Anonymous Coward]

Grandpa Simpson:

"One way to get rid of them is to tell 'em stories that don't go anywhere. Like the time we went over to Shelbyville during the war, I wore an onion on my belt....which was the style at the time...you couldn't get those white ones, you could only get those big yellow ones.................now where was I........oh yeah, the important thing was I was wearing an onion on my belt, which was the style at the time, you couldn't get those... (trails off)"

source [wikiquote.org]