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From: weyand@csli.Stanford.EDU (Chris Weyand)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: Value of turing test?
Message-ID: <14942@csli.Stanford.EDU>
Date: 17 Aug 90 17:29:23 GMT
References: <2860@bruce.cs.monash.OZ.AU> <3156@gara.une.oz.au> <3231@psueea.UUCP> <66412@lll-winken.LLNL.GOV> <3240@psueea.UUCP> <2356@eisvxe.moundst.mn.org>
Sender: weyand@csli.Stanford.EDU (Chris Weyand)
Distribution: comp
Organization: Center for the Study of Language and Information, Stanford U.
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In <2356@eisvxe.moundst.mn.org> cr_kempke@eisvxe.moundst.mn.org (Travelling SMU GURU) writes:

>	Actually, I have an even larger problem with the Turing Test:  I don't
>believe most PEOPLE could pass it.   When most of us converse (verbally), we
>stutter, make mistakes, lie, misunderstand, fail to communicate, etc. etc.

These points don't have anything to do with the TT.  Would you label some one
as un-intelligent just because they...ummmm...couldn't....ummm...well, you know
...uuhhhh...speak without mistakes?  On the contrary if I was conversing in
real-time with someone (or thing) through a terminal I'd find it very strange if
they were able to whip out nice grammatical sentences that were perfectly clear
Lying, misunderstanding are parts of intelligence.  Why does a person ususally
tell a lie?  Not because they are defective but because they have determined 
through some careful (or maybe hasty) reasoning that lying in some given
situation is in their interests.  Anaylyzing misunderstandings probably 
involves some pretty interesting excursions into intentions and reasoning about
others motives/intentions.

>More importantly, not all of US are equally skilled in every domain.  For
>example, if you asked me about sports figures or basic Newtonian physics, I
>might not be able to answer even "simple" domain-specific questions.  If you
>were talking across a teletype to me, and were fairly convinced that I was a
>computer, I could do little to convince you otherwise, despite the fact that I
>am allegedly intelligent.

Nothing in the TT says that the questionee has to be able to answer all 
questions knowledgably.  If you look at Turing's original paper he demonstrates
what a conversation might look like;  I don't remember it exactly but he writes
something that goes like

	Q: Write me a sonnet on ...
	A: Count me out on that one, I was never any good at poetry.
	Q: Add 123456 and 54321
	A: [pause 30 seconds]    177877  (The wrong answer!)

I think we know that having a database that covers a large domain of knowledge
has nothing to do with intelligence.  Or at least not with the interesting
aspects of intelligence; creativity, adaptation, learning, analogical thought..


>	The Turing test fails because of the fundamental problem that there's 
>no good definition of intelligence, but it's a fair estimate.  We just have to 
>make sure that we're not requiring the computer to solve a harder task than we
>ourselves do.  We have a habit of defining intelligence as "Anything we can do
>that a mere computer can't", which will get us nowhere in the end.

This isn't why it fails this is why it succeeds!  Turing thought the question
"Do machines think?" to be meaningless.  That was his motivation for inventing
this game.  Yes he also noted the objection that this test may be too hard,
however surely if we come across a machine that passes it we have shown 
something very interesting about intelligence.


Chris Weyand
weyand@csli.Stanford.edu