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From: lintz@cis.udel.edu (Brian Lintz)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Turing Test: opinions on an idea
Message-ID: <53693@nigel.ee.udel.edu>
Date: 15 May 91 16:34:15 GMT
References: <2200@seti.inria.fr> <1991May15.003627.23521@mp.cs.niu.edu> <1991May15.055331.10631@cs.ubc.ca>
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In article <1991May15.055331.10631@cs.ubc.ca> yking@cs.ubc.ca (Yossarian Yggy King) writes:

>WRT the Turing test, it seems like a very naive way to assess intelligence.
>To draw an analogy with software engineering, the TT is equivalent to
>running a program for a while, trying a whole bunch of different inputs,
>and hoping that you manage to detect all the bugs.

I look at it this way. I have conversations on the net and
through email with people I have never seen. But just by
their responses to my questions or comments, I know they
are intelligent. If I found out that one of these people
were actually a computer, I would probably think that it
was intelligent. The Turing Test is even more stringent;
you know beforehand that the person may be human or a computer,
so you can gear your questions toward it. Remember, you can
ask it anything; tell it jokes to see if it understands the 
humor, ask it to do something creative, etc. If I couldn't
tell if the machine was a machine or a human, in all fairness,
I would have to assume it was intelligent.

Brian Lintz
lintz@udel.edu