The Turing Test - Think YOU could pass?

I learned something interesting today in my natural quest for new and useless knowledge. Today, I learned of a person named Alan Turing. He was a man ahead of his time. He was a mathematician, philosopher, and codebreaker. Among other things, he is also the founder of Computer Science.

Mr. Turing was born in London in 1912, and died by suicide (cyanide poisoning) in 1954. During his short life, he accomplished much. He had a degree in Quantum Mechanics, probability and logic from Cambridge University. He received his Ph.D. in logic, algebra and number theory from Princeton University.

Turing felt that in time - 50 years by his prediction - computers would be programmed to rival humans in intelligence. To prove his theory, he developed a test for machine intelligence in 1950.

To support his theory, Turing created an 'imitation game', where a human being and a computer would be questioned under conditions where the person asking the questions would not know which was which, since the communication would be entirely by text messages. Turing said if the person questioning could not tell the difference by questioning, then we must call the computer intelligent. Today, this 'imitation game' is called the Turing test for intelligence.

People have taken Turing's theory and run with it - taking his statement that "in 50 years" computers would be as intelligent as humans. Computer programmers were encouraged to create programs that would fool the judges into thinking that the computer was actually a human being. There is The Loebner Prize in Artificial Intelligence, which actually held it's first contest in 1991. The competition for the fiftieth anniversary of Turing's prediction was held in 2000 at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire.

What interesting things have turned up from these contests. You should google this and read all about it. You can actually link up to the programs created for these contests and have yourself a conversation with the computer. See if YOU can tell the difference!! Um, I'll never tell about my experience (these computers like to talk about sex..)

It was reported that no program entered in the competition even came close to fooling the judges, so therefore we can now say that Alan Turing was incorrect in his prediction.... So far...

Chat soon.

xoxo