
What was Alan Turing's imitation game? - Thevet
http://www.thecritique.com/articles/what-was-alan-turings-imitation-game/
======
WhitneyLand
I hate it when people criticize the Turing test as imprecise or unproductive.
While it may be not be an important benchmark in serious AI research, it's
been incredibly thought provoking and inspiring for over half a century. Many
great scientists give us value beyond their publications in journals, essays,
and dreams that help to put the bigger picture into perspective.

Also I'm glad the movie came out so it's easier to explain to my family about
one of my personal heros.

~~~
slacka
Turing is also one of my heroes too, but that doesn't mean I have to worship
every idea of his. As you pointed out the problem with the Turing Test is that
IS as imprecise or unproductive.

This would be fine if decades of serious AI research and millions of dollars
hadn't be wasted trying to fool humans with these stupid psychological tricks.
I know first hand as I took an "AI" course at my University centered around
their home grown chatbot. And it's not just my school, here's a list of 400
research papers dedicated to the topic.[1]

As the article points out Turing's idea that was never fully flushed out. It's
nothing more than a distraction for researchers and a silly parlor trick for
everyone else. Stong AI is never going to come by tricking the interviewer
that you're a 13-year-old Ukrainian boy.[2] It's going to come by a
fundamental understanding of the nature of intelligence.

[1] [https://www.chatbots.org/papers/](https://www.chatbots.org/papers/)

[2] [http://motherboard.vice.com/read/how-a-computer-beat-the-
tur...](http://motherboard.vice.com/read/how-a-computer-beat-the-turing-test-
by-pretending-to-be-a-13-year-old-boy)

------
snowwrestler
I don't think it is surprising at all that Turing took the possibility of
telepathy seriously. Many scientists and educated people took the possibility
seriously in the 1950s, 60s, and 70s. This is reflected in the many research
projects conducted at the time in academia and government (most infamously,
the MKULTRA CIA program).

You can see this belief represented in the "hard" science fiction published at
the time, much of which treated telepathy and other ESP subjects seriously--
including Bester's _The Demolished Man_ , Asimov's _Foundation_ series,
Heinlein's _Stranger in a Strange Land_ , Clarke's _Childhood 's End_, and
Niven's _Known Space_ series.

There was a real and broadly shared sense, for several decades, that
psychology and ESP might be the area of the next fundamental scientific
breakthrough.

It was not until the 1980s that it became clear ESP was a dead-end, and today
it's mostly mocked by the scientific community as a source of scams. But to
apply today's mindset to Turing's 1950 paper is a pretty substantial hindsight
error.

~~~
sukilot
Telepathy exists, in the form of brain waves that can be measured and
stimulated via electrodes.

------
silentrob
Very interesting read. If anyone is interested in chatbots or conversational
AI, I'm working on the space (in the open) superscriptjs.com

