Is Your IM Buddy Really a Computer? 288
audiovideodisco writes "Every year the Loebner Prize goes to the chatbot (and the corresponding human companion) that fares best on a Turing test administered by a panel of judges. Discover talked to Kevin Warwick, the professor who runs the competition, to get pointers on how one would go about detecting a bot. While there are some general approaches you can use, nothing is foolproof — and asking about Sarah Palin can be downright deceptive. One judge concluded an interlocutor was a bot because it didn't recognize Palin's name ... but it turned out the chatter was a French librarian who'd simply never heard of her." The chat transcripts show how difficult picking bot from non-bot is getting.
Palin? (Score:5, Funny)
If the reply back about Sarah Palin is "She's great and would be the best person to be our next president!" you are talking to a computer.
re Never heard of Palin? (Score:5, Funny)
I'll be damn! I'd never thought there would be advantages to being a frenchman!
Obligatory (Score:5, Funny)
I for one welcome our new chatbot overlords.
I'm totally not one of them, you can trust me.
Re:Obama Policies Will Bankrupt USA Tsarkon Report (Score:2, Funny)
Clearly a bot, he continuously posts the same repetitive drivel.
Re:Obligatory (Score:5, Funny)
I for one welcome our new chatbot overlords.
I'm totally not one of them, you can trust me.
A bot would be a nice change from the usual... http://www.yardwear.net/blog/content/binary/t-shirt_10.jpg [yardwear.net]
Re:Or is your computer really an IM Buddy? (Score:4, Funny)
ya i no wat u mean som ppl jst cant be bothered to spll or pnctuate
Not necessarily (Score:1, Funny)
It could also be that you're just talking to a fucking moron.
Re:Palin? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:even bots apparently can't spell (Score:5, Funny)
no u
Now that it's the opposite it's twice upon a time (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Change we can believe in. (Score:4, Funny)
I've been a bot for years.
I used to chat with bots of Quake3Arena.
Its fun, you never know what they'll say before launching a rocket in your direction.
Re:Anyone for a General AI prize? (Score:5, Funny)
Matt Mahoney to Hutter show details 9:33 AM (7 hours ago) [google.com]
I have uploaded a mirror of Alexander Ratushnyak's new submission to the Hutter prize [hutter1.net] to http://cs.fit.edu/~mmahoney/compression/text.html#1323 [fit.edu] [fit.edu] It is in the paq8hp12 section. Scroll down to the bottom of the list of versions just above the table. The submission is decomp8.zip which contains 2 files, decomp8.exe and archive8.bin, the decompressor and compressed file. There is no compressor. To decompress:
decomp8 archive8.bin enwik8
The direct link is http://cs.fit.edu/~mmahoney/compression/decomp8.zip [fit.edu] [fit.edu] Decompression took about 2 hours on my computer and used a little over 924 MB memory. The total size of the 2 files is 15,986,677 which passes the 3% threshold improvement from his previous submission of 16,481,655 bytes on May 14, 2007.
The submission was Mar. 23. The 30 day comment period before awarding the prize ends Apr. 22, 2009.
That's exactly what a bot would say.
Re:Palin? (Score:2, Funny)
Slash-bots? (Score:5, Funny)
I wonder how many Slashdotters are actually bots, and how you would find us out...
Oops, I mean--ack--
+++out of cheese error+++
+++please reinstall universe+++
+++redo from start+++
David Caruso (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Interlocutors (Score:5, Funny)
On a tangential note the interlocutors I hate the most are the pre-programmed phone systems the telco sets up to "help" you. You know, the ones that say "I'm sorry, I didn't understand the question" when you tell them for the hundredth time "my DSL keeps randomly disconnecting."
At least they're ten times better than the outsourced-to-India tech support.
Re:Want to see some really clever bots in action? (Score:5, Funny)
An AC, talking about personal ads, sexy webcams and borderline credit card fraud posts 3 IM handles on Slashdot and asks if we want to see them in action?
No thank you. I got into enough trouble randomly clicking on that blacklist that got posted on Wikileaks.
Re:Want to see some really clever bots in action? (Score:5, Funny)
WHAT?? NOOOO! I've wasted SO MUCH TIME!!!
Re:Change we can believe in. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Slash-bots? (Score:2, Funny)
people argue with computer daemons all the time (Score:5, Funny)
only the other day my wife, on receiving a "sorry, I have been unable to send this email for X days" from the exim (MTA) daemon replied to it telling it not to bother any more!
FX: facepalm!
Turing Test won with artificial stupidity (Score:5, Funny)
Artificial intelligence came a step closer this weekend when a computer came within five percent of passing the Turing Test [today.com], which the computer passes if people cannot tell between the computer and a human.
The winning conversation was with competitor LOLBOT:
The human tester said he couldn't believe a computer could be so mind-numbingly stupid.
LOLBOT has since been released into the wild to post random abuse, hentai manga and titty shots to 4chan, after having been banned from YouTube for commenting in a perspicacious and on-topic manner.
LOLBOT was also preemptively banned from editing Wikipedia. "We don't consider this sort of thing a suitable use of the encyclopedia," sniffed administrator WikiFiddler451, who said it had nothing to do with his having been one of the human test subjects picked as a computer.
"This is a marvellous achievement, and shows great progress toward goals I've worked for all my life," said Professor Kevin Warwick of the University of Reading, confirming his status as a system failing the Turing test.
Re:Not necessarily (Score:3, Funny)
Yeah, there's a huge problem with the Turing Test, which is that you have to distinguish between a computer and a person drawn from the pool of humans intelligent and aware enough to have learned to speak and use a keyboard.
Unfortunately, as YouTube (and even /.) comments demonstrate, there is no lower limit to the intellectual capacity of a person who is still capable of speaking and using a keyboard.
It isn't a problem at all: the Turing test is not supposed to demonstrate that the machine is a rocket scientist. The test succeeds if the person conducting it can't reliably distinguish between the machine and the human. Just find human subjects whose intelligence is comparable to the machine being tested. For example, running it on the typical Slashbot, you can successfully prove the intelligence of toasters.
Re:David Caruso (Score:3, Funny)
I hate you. This is going to ruin some moderating but I just had to tell you that I, not being a regular TV watcher, googled the name and got this youtube clip [youtube.com].
Re:I have a way of dealing with this, (Score:1, Funny)
screwing with the bot
Ewwwwww!!!
Re:re Never heard of Palin? (Score:3, Funny)
You consider yourself to be a frenchmen?
Here i was, thinking that Quebeckers would be the last to be insulted by such a joke... but making a post with only an insult in Quebecker isn't gonna help you in any way, it's making us look like rude people...
Re:I have a way of dealing with this, (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Palin? Tsarkon (Score:3, Funny)
Did you ever read the post I was responding to?
Welcome to Slashdot, bitch.
Re:Change we can believe in. (Score:5, Funny)
That's nothing - I've been sleeping with a bot for 22 years.
Your hand is not cybernetic! Now, write that on the blackboard 500 times.
Re:Philosophical (Score:2, Funny)
Your TV/DVR could find shows that you would like but didn't know to ask for
That's what TiVo is supposed to do but somehow it thinks all you want to watch is crap.
Re:Palin? (Score:4, Funny)
I have a wetsuit and a laptop with WiFi. I accept your challenge.
Re:Foolproof (Score:4, Funny)
Can you type this backwards, read it, and tell me the result, please? 'net sulp neetfif'
Yes. Yes I can.
How does that make you feel?
Tell me more about yourself.
Re:Not necessarily (Score:3, Funny)
A person can, for a substantial period of time, be tricked by a 'flirty' bot that comes across as a cute, dumb female. It's kind of funny to see a (sub-average intelligence, I'd guess) person hold a running dialog/virtual relationship for several months with a bot.
Anything to boost my ego. I've personally set up six bots which I have a long-distance relationship with. I go home after work to my (real life) girlfriend and I sit there listening to her complaints but still feeling smug.
It's the only way to deal with it, besides nuking her from orbit.
Re:Not necessarily (Score:3, Funny)
Turing is for wimps (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Want to see some really clever bots in action? (Score:4, Funny)