Turing Test Passed!!

[Samson]

From the beeb:

A computer program called Eugene Goostman, which simulates a 13-year-old Ukrainian boy, is said to have passed the Turing test at an event organised by the University of Reading.
...
No computer has passed the test before under these conditions, it is reported.

The 65-year-old Turing Test is successfully passed if a computer is mistaken for a human more than 30% of the time during a series of five-minute keyboard conversations.

On 7 June Eugene convinced 33% of the judges at the Royal Society in London that it was human.

Eugene was created by Vladimir Veselov, who was born in Russia and now lives in the United States, and Ukrainian-born Eugene Demchenko, who now lives in Russia.

The judges and hidden human control groups were kept apart throughout the test.

The event has been labelled as "historic" by the organisers, who claim no computer has passed the test before.

"Some will claim that the Test has already been passed," said Kevin Warwick, a visiting professor at the University of Reading and deputy vice-chancellor for research at Coventry University.

"The words Turing test have been applied to similar competitions around the world. However, this event involved the most simultaneous comparison tests than ever before, was independently verified and, crucially, the conversations were unrestricted.

"A true Turing test does not set the questions or topics prior to the conversations. We are therefore proud to declare that Alan Turing's test was passed for the first time on Saturday."

Interesting, it does sound like this is the most well controlled test to date, but convincing 33% of the judges in a 5 minute test may not be as ground breaking as all that.

 

[IglooDame]

Worth reading this:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/06/10/world_to_captain_cyborg_youre_rumbled/

Here's how it starts:

For 14 years, The Register has been chronicling the publicity stunts of Kevin Warwick, an attention-seeking academic with a sideline in self-mutilation*. In fact, Warwick has been making improbable claims to the press for much longer than that: over twenty years. But the world has continued to relay Warwick's stunts and soundbytes unskeptically.

Until now, that is.

This week, the realisation may have belatedly dawned on much of the mainstream media that a Kevin Warwick claim needs to be taken with a mine's worth of salt. The "science" proves (or disproves) very little, and his predictions are frequently a load of <bollocks>. Former BBC science man David Whitehouse reminded everyone via Twitter this week that as far back as 1991, Warwick was predicting "real life Terminators" within ten years.

 

[illram]

Why do people want robots they can talk to? I just need it to clean the house, cook dinner, and go get me groceries and beer. No talking needed.

 

[Zelig]

Why do people want robots they can talk to? I just need it to clean the house, cook dinner, and go get me groceries and beer. No talking needed.

I want robots to replace my accountant, lawyer and doctor.

 

[illram]

If robots get involved in the legal industry I think they should just go straight to robot judges and eliminate lawyers all together. Party A and B feed their case into the Judge-o-Tron5000EX, and it spits out the verdict, and everyone is happy.

 

[Zelig]

I'd be alright with that.

But really, there's a ton of useful work for robots that wouldn't displace any competent, existing lawyers - there's like an order of magnitude more patent work to do than there are qualified patent lawyers, and the protectionist nature of the legal industry in North America means I can't hire some Indians to write up all my patents for me or farm it out to MTurk - so I'd derive huge benefits from a robot following me around and describing everything I do in the form of patent applications that are automatically filed in my name.

Best case scenario it results in software patents being eliminated and complete reboot of the patent system.