machine that can flawlessly imitate humans; for example, do we really need to build computers that make spelling mistakes or occasionally add numbers incorrectly, as in Turing’s original article, 19 in order to fool people into thinking they are human? So, rather than require a machine to pass a Turing Test and try to proscribe questions that are unfair or inappropriate to judging its intelligence, we should accept the computer as a valid interlocutor and interact with it as an interactive, high-level, sophisticated information source.

big Data

If we set aside the attempt to build a machine that can pass the Turing Test, can we still make progress in AI that is, nonetheless, in the spirit of the Turing Test? Let us start by considering two fundamental changes that have occurred in recent years— the availability of vast quantities of data of all sorts and the increased speed and power of machines to analyze that data.

The amount of data now available to machines would have been simply unimaginable as recently as 15 years ago; for example, a full visual and auditory recording of 85% of the waking life of an infant from birth to age three exists. 15, 16 Researchers are also developing (and wearing) sophisticated “life-experience” recording devices that allow individuals to record all of the visual and auditory (and potentially, olfactory and tactile) information they experience throughout the day. 1 This means all of the words you might ever utter, hear, read, or write could be stored somewhere as data. Moreover, it could be multiplied by the thousands or even millions of other individuals who also choose to record their lives. To this, add all other available sources of information, from Twitter feeds to Wikipedia, from Facebook to blogs on every conceivable subject, and much, much more. 18 Equally important is the explosion of new algorithms to retrieve, analyze, correlate, and cross-reference this sea of data.

It is reasonable to assume that all
of it, appropriately analyzed, would
allow a computer to answer ques-
tions, including those about people’s
reactions to events, as well as their
emotions and feelings, it would have
had no hope of answering appropri-
ately a decade ago. But there will for-
ever remain “unfair” questions on
the Turing Test, such as one from a
recent commentary4: “Hold up both
hands and spread your fingers apart.
Now put your palms together and fold
your two middle fingers down till the
knuckles on both fingers touch each
other. While holding this position,
one after the other, open and close
each pair of opposing fingers by an
inch or so. Notice anything?”
Try it yourself. Simply by doing the
experiment, you will discover the fact
(completely irrelevant as regards in-
telligence) that you cannot separate
your two ring fingers. But how would a
computer without a body ever answer
the question or a million others like
it? And even if, by trolling the Web,
someone had reported the answer to
this particular body-dependent exper-
iment, there are thousands of other
quirky facts, some related to cognitive
abilities (such as computation time
for multiplication of multi-digit num-
bers and misspelled words), some
with absolutely nothing to do with in-
telligence, that would trip up a com-
puter. Attempting to define which
of these questions is fair or unfair
for a Turing Test is not only contrary
to the spirit of the Test as originally
proposed by Turing but also an en-
deavor necessarily doomed to failure.
My view is: Don’t try; accept that ma-
chines will not be able to answer them
and move on. The point is essentially
the same one I made in an earlier es-
say, 5 that it would be “essentially im-
possible for a machine that has not
experienced the world as we have to
pass the Turing Test.” This observa-
tion in no way implies renouncing the
goal of building intelligent machines.
It suggests merely that we renounce
the Turing-inspired goal of building
intelligent machines that mimic our
own behavior so perfectly that we
would not be able to distinguish them
from ourselves.

 

evolution of brute force The human brain relies on 1011 neurons, each with 103 synapses, all working in concert to produce cognition. At the lowest level, the brain is

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with me.
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human tøne...<
>> Really? Yøu
are sømewhat
reticent
yøurself.<<
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>> I knøw.<<
> Smug.<
>> Møi*?<<
> I think
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