Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!think.com!spool.mu.edu!uunet!mcsun!corton!inria!seti!nuri!ziane From: ziane@nuri.inria.fr (ziane mikal @) Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy Subject: Re: Turing Test: opinions on an idea Message-ID: <2212@seti.inria.fr> Date: 21 May 91 13:14:22 GMT Article-I.D.: seti.2212 References: Sender: news@seti.inria.fr Organization: INRIA Rocquencourt,Le Chesnay, France. Lines: 53 Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy Subject: Re: Turing Test: opinions on an idea Summary: Expires: References: Sender: Followup-To: Distribution: Organization: INRIA Rocquencourt,Le Chesnay, France. Keywords: Once again this idea of a conversation tree seems almost ridiculous, although it is surprisingly a bit more difficult to eliminate than one would think at first. However, how do you cope with numbers ? A number is correct English right ? How do you incorporate any possible number in your tree ? If I say "how much is 5 times 3 ?" for example. If you say that whenever a number appears the machine would say "stop! I am useless with numbers, although I'm quite intelligent otherwise" I'm afraid you will have to end with a pretty bug list of exceptions. Numbers are only one example out of many others. Also numbers may be evoked indirectly so that you can't easily rule them out with a syntactic mechanism. About the memory of the conversation: having an amnesic computer is another limitation. I forecast that the list is only beginning. Mr Mc Dermott's arguments about contextual references (what time is it? etc) are very convincing. Once again getting rid of them imposes new limitations. I don't understand anything about all those hypothetic figures on the number of possible English conversation. I expect something more serious to convince me that a conversation tree is possible. What about the description of what I see now, and my asking questions about it ? Where are the reliable figures about a game tree producing ACCEPTABLE answers to such questions. I do not consider that Eliza-like answers are convincing, although it may be true that a machine may hide more successfully behind a very particular role (psychic or mute-deaf-blind etc). The point is that maybe some human beings may not pass the test, but the context of the test should be made large enough to be convincing. Finaly we should agree about the mechanism using the tree and about the tree. Somebody has proposed grammars etc. If anything like that is used of course (and I think it was the point of this person) the system may produce acceptable answers because it would be intelligent ! The first proposal was a simple table lookup, right ? Mikal.