What's the Turing Test you ask?
Turing test
The Turing test is a test of a machine's ability to exhibit intelligent behavior equivalent to, or indistinguishable from, that of a human. In the original illustrative example, a human judge engages in natural language conversations with a human and a machine designed to generate performance indistinguishable from that of a human being. All participants are separated from one another. If the judge cannot reliably tell the machine from the human, the machine is said to have passed the test. The test does not check the ability to give the correct answer to questions; it checks how closely the answer resembles typical human answers. The conversation is limited to a text-only channel such as a computer keyboard and screen so that the result is not dependent on the machine's ability to render words into audio.[2]
The test was introduced by Alan Turing in his 1950 paper "Computing Machinery and Intelligence," which opens with the words: "I propose to consider the question, 'Can machines think?'" Because "thinking" is difficult to define, Turing chooses to "replace the question by another, which is closely related to it and is expressed in relatively unambiguous words."[3] Turing's new question is: "Are there imaginable digital computers which would do well in the imitation game?"[4] This question, Turing believed, is one that can actually be answered. In the remainder of the paper, he argued against all the major objections to the proposition that "machines can think".[5]
In the years since 1950, the test has proven to be both highly influential and widely criticized, and it is an essential concept in the philosophy of artificial intelligence.[1][6]
sources here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_test
made by this man:
Alan Turing
Alan Mathison Turing, OBE, FRS (/ˈtjʊərɪŋ/ TEWR-ing; 23 June 1912 – 7 June 1954) was a British mathematician, logician, cryptanalyst, philosopher, computer scientist, mathematical biologist, and marathon and ultra distance runner. He was highly influential in the development of computer science, providing a formalisation of the concepts of "algorithm" and "computation" with the Turing machine, which can be considered a model of a general purpose computer.[2][3][4] Turing is widely considered as the "Father of Theoretical Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence.[5]
sources and more here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Turing
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Did the Singularity Just Happen?
· June 9, 2014
AUTHOR: PETER ROTHMAN
It has been all over the tech news for the past 24 hours, an "artificial intelligence" agent or chatbot known as "Eugene Goostman" has passed the famous Turing Test. Or did it?
Did the Singularity just happen?
Unfortunately not.
So, what really happened in this Turing Test challenge and what does it mean for the future of humanity and our machines?
The original press release states, "The 65 year-old iconic Turing Test was passed for the very first time by supercomputer Eugene Goostman during Turing Test 2014 held at the renowned Royal Society in London on Saturday." and further continues "If a computer is mistaken for a human more than 30% of the time during a series of five minute keyboard conversations it passes the test. No computer has ever achieved this, until now. Eugene managed to convince 33% of the human judges that it was human."
First, some background is required in order to understand exactly what the Turing Test is and what it is not. Perhaps understandably there is some confusion over exactly what Turing said and meant as the Test.
The Turing Test originally appeared in Turing's 1950 paper "Computing Machinery and Intelligence" which can be found here. In the paper, Turing outlines the procedure of the Test which he calls the Imitation Game:
"The new form of the problem can be described in terms of a game which we call the 'imitation game." It is played with three people, a man (A), a woman (B), and an interrogator (C) who may be of either sex. The interrogator stays in a room apart front the other two. The object of the game for the interrogator is to determine which of the other two is the man and which is the woman. He knows them by labels X and Y, and at the end of the game he says either "X is A and Y is B" or "X is B and Y is A." The interrogator is allowed to put questions to A and B"
Here's exactly what Turing said that leads to confusion:
"It will simplify matters for the reader if I explain first my own beliefs in the matter. Consider first the more accurate form of the question. I believe that in about fifty years' time it will be possible, to programme computers, with a storage capacity of about 10^9, to make them play the imitation game so well that an average interrogator will not have more than 70 per cent chance of making the right identification after five minutes of questioning."
Clearly this is not a statement of a success criteria for the Test, and the statement does not appear in the section of the paper where the Test or Imitation Game is described and specified but in later section on defending the notion against objections. In the earlier section where the Imitation Game is defined, Turing arguably implies that a single instance of fooling a human would constitute passing of the Test. In some limited sense then, the Turing Test was passed years ago and in fact the software Eugene Goostman has previously fooled judges in Turing Test competitions.
The press release actually anticipated this objection right up front, ""Some will claim that the Test has already been passed. The words Turing Test have been applied to similar competitions around the world."
However this recent test was not a single "one off" but included a panel of 25 judges who each reviewed five competing software programs.
Turing himself was ambiguous and incomplete in describing the Test and he made various statements about the Test on different occasions. Some of these were in his technical publications but others were in broadcast interviews. For example, he never states how long the procedure should take or what other criteria might be used for ending the test in the original paper. Further, it is not well known that Turing offered a somewhat different formulation of the Test in 1952 wherein he suggested the use of a panel of randomly selected judges. In the 1952 version, Turing states that at least 50% or a simple majority is require to pass his Test. The 1952 formulation was presented in a BBC talk broadcast "Can Digital Computers Think" in which Turing also predicted that the Test wouldn't be passed for at least 100 years or not before 2050. To further the ambiguity, Turing failed to mention that there should be a human and computer participant in each trial in this presentation perhaps modifying the idea of the Test in a problematic way that introduces bias.
It seems that this idea about 30% being a passing mark is a mistaken understanding resulting from taking Turing's 1950 prediction about future computer performance out of context. The confusion is understandable since this mistaken idea is widely but erroneously reported in the literature. But if you read the original in context it is clear that Turing was predicting machine performance and not stating the success criteria for the Imitation Game.
According to the press release, "Eugene was 'born' in 2001." and he has been under continued development since. The announcement continues, "This year we improved the 'dialog controller' which makes the conversation far more human-like when compared to programs that just answer questions. Going forward we plan to make Eugene smarter and continue working on improving what we refer to as 'conversation logic'."
Based on the press frenzy, you might have assumed that this performance was a huge leap forward for Eugene. But it wasn't. Back in 2012 Goostman had fooled 29% of the judges meaning the 2014 result is an improvement of just 4%. And with a panel of 25 judges this means just one additional judge was fooled from the 2012 trial, hardly what we might call a great leap ahead in performance. However this test was "open ended", that is, the judges were not restricted in their questioning or question areas. While open ended tests are obviously more challenging, the actual difference here is small and possibly not due to a real advancement in "intelligence" or performance.
The press release states, " Our main idea was that he can claim that he knows anything, but his age also makes it perfectly reasonable that he doesn't know everything. We spent a lot of time developing a character with a believable personality." But beyond avoiding answering, the chatbot isn't really able to do much. The implications will therefore be quite limited.
Eugene doesn't have the ability to learn or even remember very much within the five minute test period for example. It doesn't utilize a database of domain knowledge that a real 13 year old would have. It is in essence a parlor trick. This will greatly limit the utility of this software in practice and I have to question some of the claimed application areas at least near term.
In my experience, it is trivially easy to get nonsense out of Eugene if you know what to say.
While text based agents that can reliably imitate human interactions will eventually be a big deal, this software's performance is insufficient to maintain the required illusion. Imagine using a Eugene Goostman bot as a "mindclone" to answer your office telephone while you skip out to the beach or a long lunch. I am sorry to report that this software simply isn't going to do a very good job if your boss calls and even if it fooled the caller, it couldn't explain to you what they wanted. Generally speaking this test result may say more about the gullibility of the panel of judges than intelligence or power of the machine. The absence of a control group makes it impossible to rule this out.
A stronger form of the Turing Test would include a control group and could be conducted following Turing's 1952 explanation using the Internet to gather a large pool of potential non-specialist judges from which to randomly sample. In addition the success criteria of a simple majority stated by Turing in 1952 makes some sense while the widely reported 30% threshold does not. This stronger Internet based test seems like a viable and useful idea to further AI research.
But sadly we'll have to wait a bit longer for the Singularity to happen.
here:
http://hplusmagazine.com/2014/06/09/did-the-singularity-just-happen/
================ more here ================
No, Eugene didn’t pass the Turing Test – but he will soon
By Jamie Bartlett Science Last updated: June 21st, 2014
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/technology/jamiebartlett/100013858/no-eugene-didnt-pass-the-turing-test-but-he-will-soon/
Google futurist Ray Kurzweil and other experts say chatbot didn't pass Turing Test
By Jacob Kastrenakes on June 11, 2014 01:44 pm
High-profile members of the tech community are pushing back against reports over the weekend that said a computer had passed the Turing Test for the first time, tricking a group of judges into believing that it was human. The feat was performed using a chatbot named Eugene Goostman that pretends to be a 13 year old writing in a second language. But though the machine clearly passed the tests put forward by the competition that it was a part of, many are arguing that this was not, in fact, an accurate Turing Test.
That's because the test doesn't define specific rules, meaning it's up to the public at large to determine whether a computer has actually passed it. Ray Kurzweil, Google's engineering director and a noted futurist, is among those saying that this isn't that moment. In a blog post addressing the reports, Kurzweil quotes an excerpt from his 2004 book, The Singularity Is Near. "Because the definition of the Turing Test will vary from person to person, Turing Test capable machines will not arrive on a single day, and there will be a period during which we will hear claims that machines have passed the threshold," he wrote. "Invariably, these early claims will be debunked by knowledgeable observers, probably including myself."
He does that now, explaining that restrictions on the test posed big problems. For one, that the bot claimed to be 13 and writing in a second language excused major flaws. Judges testing the machine were also limited to five minutes of interaction with it, raising the chances of them being momentarily fooled. "I chatted with the chatbot Eugene Goostman, and was not impressed," Kurzweil writes. "Eugene does not keep track of the conversation, repeats himself word for word, and often responds with typical chatbot non sequiturs."
read more here:
http://www.theverge.com/2014/6/11/5800440/ray-kurzweil-and-others-say-turing-test-not-passed
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What is the Singularity?
Technological singularity
The technological singularity, or simply the singularity, is a hypothetical moment in time when artificial intelligence, human biological enhancement, or brain-computer interfaces will have progressed to the point of a greater-than-human intelligence, radically changing civilization, and perhaps human nature.[1] Because the capabilities of such an intelligence may be difficult for a human to comprehend, the technological singularity is often seen as an occurrence (akin to a gravitational singularity) beyond which the future course of human history is unpredictable or even unfathomable.[2]
The first use of the term "singularity" in this context was by mathematician John von Neumann. In 1958, regarding a summary of a conversation with von Neumann, Stanislaw Ulam described "ever accelerating progress of technology and changes in the mode of human life, which gives the appearance of approaching some essential singularity in the history of the race beyond which human affairs, as we know them, could not continue".[3] The term was popularized by science fiction writer Vernor Vinge, who argues that artificial intelligence, human biological enhancement, or brain-computer interfaces could be possible causes of the singularity.[4] Futurist, and inventor of the portable reading machine for the blind, Ray Kurzweil cited von Neumann's use of the term in a foreword to von Neumann's classic The Computer and the Brain.
Proponents of the singularity typically postulate an "intelligence explosion",[5][6] where superintelligences design successive generations of increasingly powerful minds, that might occur very quickly and might not stop until the agent's cognitive abilities greatly surpass that of any human.
Kurzweil predicts the singularity to occur around 2045[7] whereas Vinge predicts some time before 2030.[8] At the 2012 Singularity Summit, Stuart Armstrong did a study of artificial general intelligence (AGI) predictions by experts and found a wide range of predicted dates, with a median value of 2040. Discussing the level of uncertainty in AGI estimates, Armstrong said in 2012, "It's not fully formalized, but my current 80% estimate is something like five to 100 years."[9]
larger image here: http://i.imgur.com/1C0YwWl.jpg
larger image here: http://i.imgur.com/o4TTpoZ.png
sources and more here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_singularity
larger image here: http://i.imgur.com/p8jJOkE.jpg
In relation to Prophecy...
Newswatch Magazine: November 2013
To understand the future, you must understand the past. What will blossom in the time ahead, was a seed planted years back. A seed of rebellion, of knowledge, and of deception. The world may believe that they will and have awoken to it, but in reality its already growing. A future budding into a rancid concept of the past.
more here:
http://www.newswatchmagazine.org/magazine/november-2013/
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