Friday, July 11, 2008

Touring the Turing Test

As you may recall the Turing Test was devised by the great computer
pioneer, Alan Turing, to elucidate when a computer might become human.
He devised this test in the 1940s, while he was working on breaking
the German codes during the war. The Turing test is this: if a person
communicating with a machine cannot tell if the machine is human or
not, then the machine can be considered sentient.

Actually there is a problem with this test----MOST PEOPLE would fail
the Turing test. A person in communication with a another person, and
trying to determine based on the communication if they were dealing
with a machine or a person could legitimately conclude the person in
question was a machine.