--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, TurquoiseB <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Can machines think? That was the question posed by the > great mathematician Alan Turing. Half a century later > six computers are about to converse with human interro- > gators in an experiment that will attempt to prove that > the answer is yes. > > In the 'Turing test' a machine seeks to fool judges into > believing that it could be human. The test is performed > by conducting a text-based conversation on any subject. > If the computer's responses are indistinguishable from > those of a human, it has passed the Turing test and can > be said to be 'thinking'. > > http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/oct/05/artificialintelligenceai >
Well, not quite. The idea is to see if you can't guess which is which. Just because the computer answers like a human in some ways, doesn't mean you can't guess that its not human based on clues that the programmers didn't decide to test about. And the test, as described, isn't at all the original Turing Test: that was where you had a *conversation* with the computer or a human and couldnt' guess which is which, not that you have to have a conversation on *any subject.* Throwing a pun or joke into the conversation that is obvious to a four year old which the computer doesn't "get" would be an obvious test, for example, but that doesn't sound like its allowed. Lawson