contributed articles

Doi: 10.1145/2380656.2380674

Computers interacting with, not imitating,
humans is the way forward.
bY RobeRt m. fRench
moving
beyond the
turing test

aLan tUring WoULd be 100 years old this year. In

1950 he wrote a seminal paper in which he proposed an operational definition of machine intelligence designed to sidestep the philosophical quagmire of what it means to think. 19 Turing proposed pitting a computer against a human in an “imitation game.” The computer and human are placed in separate rooms and connected by teletype to an external interrogator who can ask any imaginable question of either entity. The computer tries to fool the interrogator into believing it is the human; the human tries to convince the interrogator he or she is the human. If the interrogator cannot distinguish the computer from the person, the computer is judged to be intelligent. This simple test has come to be called the Turing Test.

In the early years of research on artificial intelligence, the test was taken very seriously, 2, 8 especially because many researchers believed truly intelligent machines were just around the corner. 13, 17 But as the 1950s to the 1980s came and went and machines were still no closer to passing the Turing Test, AI researchers began to

realize how difficult the problem of simulating human cognition would actually be. 12 It became clear that human cognition emerges from a complex, tangled web of explicit, knowl-edge-based processes and automatic, intuitive “subcognitive” processes, 10 the latter deriving largely from humans’ direct interaction with the world. Presumably, by tapping into this subcognitive substrate— something a disembodied computer did not have—a clever interrogator could unfailingly distinguish a computer from a person. 5, 6 The hope faded that machines would soon be in a position to pass such a test, 7 and serious researchers in AI focused their energy elsewhere. 9, 20

In the past decade, however, significant innovation in computer technology and data capture have brought the Turing Test back into focus. That technology, along with vast information resources that became available at the same time, have potentially brought computers closer than ever to passing the test. But, in spite of these developments, the Turing Test still presents significant hurdles, including some unrelated to machine intelligence. Questions based on largely irrelevant aspects of humans’ physiognomy, quirks in their visual, auditory, or tactile systems, and time required to complete various cognitive tasks can be devised to trip up a computer that has not lived life as we humans have with bodies like our own.

In what follows, I argue we need to put aside the attempt to build a

 

key insights

the time has come to bid farewell to the turing test.

attempting to build a machine to pass a no-holds-barred turing test is not the way forward in ai, regardless of recent advances in computing technology.

building machines that would never pass a turing test, but that can interact with humans in a highly meaningful, informative way, is the way forward in ai.