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From: jonabbey@walt.cc.utexas.edu (Jonathan Abbey)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: The Turing Test is no good!
Summary: Superior Intelligence, and a better mousetrap wanted
Keywords: intelligence, turing, mousetrap
Message-ID: <36163@ut-emx.UUCP>
Date: 16 Aug 90 14:22:58 GMT
References: <2860@bruce.cs.monash.OZ.AU> <3156@gara.une.oz.au> <2870@bruce.cs.monash.OZ.AU> <3211@gara.une.oz.au>
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Reply-To: jonabbey@walt.cc.utexas.edu (Jonathan Abbey)
Distribution: comp
Organization: Applied Research Laboratories, The University of Texas at Austin
Lines: 75

In article <3211@gara.une.oz.au>
pnettlet@gara.une.oz.au (Philip Nettleton) writes:

 [...]
>
>Remember, ANY question is fair game.
>
>-	"What did you have for breakfast?"
>-	"What do you think of Black Sabbath?"
>-	"Are you married?"
>-	"What is your wife's name?"
>-	"Do you enjoy sex?"
>-	"Have you ever been unfaithful to her?"
>-	"If you saw a dog run over in the street, what would you do?"
>
>(This is starting to sound a little like "Blade Runner", or the original
>Philip K. Dick novel, "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep".)
>
>For a machine to pass a test like this, you'd better hope its not packing a
>gun when you say its not intelligent. It may REALLY have feelings and may
>take extreme offense to an inferior (organic no less) being denying its
>obviously superior intellignce.
>
J

Er, why is it again that this indicates superior intelligence?  In fact,
what do you mean by the term?  In humans, I believe speed of processing,
ability to adapt to novelty and rapidity of learning, speed and accuracy
of recall are all commonly used as indicators of intelligence.  These
general abilities find themselves expressed in many different ways.  There
is, obviously, the personality.  Then there are the seven (I believe
that is the classical number.. can't remember all of them, though.?)
specialized intelligences.. spatial, musical, mathematical (?), and
so forth.  While these may or may not be valid compartmentalizations
of the human intelligence, they do seem to be perceived in that manner.
Would we be willing to grant bonus points to an AI that could play good
music?  One that could ride a bicycle?  One that could efficiently route
packets through a network suffering sporadic link failures?  One that
could speak all terrestrial languages?

The Turing test simplifies the issue considerably.  I would be willing
to concede intelligence to a machine that passed the test, provided the
test included the ability to creatively extrapolate from old concepts to new
ones.  Without that, even if the purported AI could carry on a stunningly
convincing debate on various issues of the day,  I rather think I would
feel as if I were talking with Eliza's precocious little sister.  With that
ability, however, I believe I would be speaking with a true AI, whether or
not the machine's implementation of the Turing machine's read/write head
understood Chinese itself or not.

Once that point is reached, on what basis could the AI's intelligence
be measured?  Certainly the size and complexity of its knowledge-base, the
speed at which accesses and correlations take place, and the degree to
which the machine's is willing and able to make and operate on creative 
extrapolations, would all be basic.

Can anyone out there suggest further basic criteria of intelligence?  The only
other things I can think of at the moment involve the machine's ability to
judge when it is and when it is not appropriate to apply creative means in
its thought processes.  Other possibilites would seem to be limited to
criteria applied to the knowledge-base, but I'm not sure what nature
such would take.

>						Philip Nettleton,
>						Tutor in Computer Science,
>						University of New England,
>						Armidale,
>						New South Wales,
>						2351,
>						AUSTRALIA.


Jonathan Abbey (512) 472-2052        \                           (512) 835-3081
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The University of Texas at Austin      \          Applied Research Laboratories