The Turing Test
What Is Turing Test?
• A person and a computer, being separated
in two rooms, answer the tester’s questions
on-line.
• If the interrogator cannot tell whether
he/she is talking to is a person or a
computer, then the computer is viewed to be
as intelligent as the person.
What Is Turing Test For?
• To check whether a machine is as
intelligent as humans.
Why Turing Test?
• One needs a benchmark for machine
intelligence.
• It’s difficult to measure internal intelligence
mechanism – because we do not quite
understand it yet, and different persons may
have different mechanisms.
• “External performance” is a objective,
measurable and consistent benchmark.
Feature of Turing Test
• It gives an objective notion of intelligence.
• It tests only intelligence of “brain without
body”, whose inputs are from the keyboard
whose outputs are sentences on screen.
• Its judgment is based on the reactions of the
machine rather than its pro-actions.
Test Intelligence or Test
Consciousness?
• Turing test was designed to test
machine intelligence.
• Its principle can be used to test
machine consciousnesses such as
emotions and self-awareness.
Intelligence vs. Consciousness
• Different between intelligence and
consciousness?
• Higher level consciousnesses prerequire higher level intelligence,
though it is controversial whether
lower level consciousnesses must be
associated with certain level of
intelligence.
Is a Machine Passed Turing
Test Intelligent?
• Its “art intelligence” and “sport
intelligence” are not tested.
• It passes the “intelligence of thinking”. If a
human-like robot showed such intelligence,
then we would not distinguish it from a real
person in terms of intelligence of thinking.
• Some insist that intelligence or not should
be determined by its internal mechanism …
Ambiguities in Objectives of
Turing Test
• Intelligence – defined in terms of
“results” or in terms of “process”?
• Understanding?
• Semantics vs. symbolic?
Searle’s Chinese Room
• A person knowing nothing about
Chinese is locked in a room with a rule
book about Chinese symbols.
• He answers questions in Chinese given
to him from the outside according to
the instructions in the rule book.
What Searle’s Chinese Room
Shows
• From the stand point of a person
outside of the room, the person in the
room understands Chinese well since
he answered the questions in Chinese
perfectly.
• But the person inside the room knows
not a single word of Chinese!
Searle’s Arguments
1. Programs are entirely syntactical.
2. Minds have a semantics.
3. Syntax is not same as, or sufficient for,
semantics.
Therefore, computer programs are not
minds
J. Wang
Flaws in Searle’s Arguments
• He is assuming what he is proving:
– He is proving “computer programs are not
mind, i.e., they are entirely syntactical”;
– He assume “programs are entirely syntactical”.
• Lack of definition of “semantics”.
• Lack of rigorous proofs of:
– Programs cannot be semantics
– Programs are entirely syntactical.
What Searle Wants to Say
• A computer may look intelligent,
understanding, touching, and even
emotional, but it achieved them by
following digital symbol processing rules,
which are the simulations of intelligence,
understanding, touching, and emotions.
• Simulation of an explosion is never
an explosion.
J. Wang
Example of E.T.
• Suppose that E.T. is locked in the
Searle’s Chinese Room, and he/she
(it?) does the translation work
perfectly.
• Would we hesitate to say, “Hey, E.T.
understands Chinese!”
• Would we care how E.T. does the
translation?
Strong AI
• Strong AI asserts that human’s mind
(intelligence, consciousness, emotion,
spirit and soul) can be programmed on
computers.
• Advocators include R. Kurzweil, M. Minsky, H.
Moravec, B. Joy, J. Hall, W. Bainbridge, T.
Kaczynski
• Opponents / skeptics include J. Searle, J. Hawkins,
R. Penrose, D. Hofstadter.
Anyway Better Than Turing
Test?
• Despite of the criticism on Turing Test,
no one has so far has put forward an
alternative way of testing machine’s
intelligence / consciousness, which is
as (or more) acceptable, practical and
effective as (than) Turing Test.