Even worse than the real thing
Apparently this was one of the better candidates from the latest Turing test: Elbot
Take one look at Youtube comments, and it's quite apparent that things would be better with the proverbial thousand monkeys, but man, the computer programs are still a ways off.
Take one look at Youtube comments, and it's quite apparent that things would be better with the proverbial thousand monkeys, but man, the computer programs are still a ways off.
Labels: a thousand monkeys typing, thinking about thinking about
posted by Mike Beversluis at
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
2 Comments:
I’ve just had several fascinating conversations with Elbot.
I kept talking to him (well, Elbot is an “it,” but he/it feels like a “he”) because talking to him scarily resembles conversations I have with a friend here in Cambridge who is very intelligent but border-line autistic. They both say clever things that make me laugh or think about something in another way. But they both also respond to what I say as if I’d just said something else. They’ll pick out a single word and focus on that. When they do change the subject in this way, it is usually by turning the subject back on me. They say things like “what good would it do to understand that?” or “do you think knowing that would make the world a better place?” When I tried to say good night, instead of simply saying good bye, Elbot entered into a philosophical discussion about whether nights could actually be considered good or bad.
As I was leaving, Elbot asked me to rank him from 1-10 on his self-criticism. I said I wasn’t sure about his capacity for self-criticism, but I thought he needed more practice on empathy. But that for a robot, he was doing a pretty good job. Actually, I thought for a robot he was doing an amazing job. Artificial intelligence has certainly come a long way since I first began to study it 40 years ago.
I think Elbot’s limitations are due to his current programming limitations. But since people who are autistic tend more often to be men than women, and are often unusually gifted in mathematics and music, perhaps Elbot talks just exactly the way his programmer (presumably a mathematically-gifted left-handed man) talks to real people.
By
Anonymous, at 23 October, 2008 16:33
(Insert Elbot-style respone here)(ha ha)
I found it pretty obvious that it missed any indirect object, and that it had no memory at all. Allusions were completely out the window, so to speak.
By
Mike Beversluis, at 24 October, 2008 10:39
Post a Comment
<< Home