Will computers be smarter than people in the future? In the 1950s, computer scientist Alan Turing sought to answer the question of whether computers are capable of imitating human intelligence under specific conditions.
Alan Turing designed an "imitation game," now known as the Turing test. The essence of the test is a remote human investigator, who must distinguish between a computer and a human subject within a specified time frame based on their answers to various questions asked by the investigator. The test is repeated many times. If the interviewer makes the correct determination in the middle of the test runs or less, the computer is considered to be able to mimic human intelligence under certain conditions.
The Turing test can be considered simple by today's standard. The main critical point was the fact that it says nothing about the judge, but the success of the game depends crucially on how smart, informed and intelligent the judge is. Advances in conversational artificial intelligence with a limited field of a particular subject have made the version of the Turing test largely irrelevant. For many scientists, the question of whether a computer can pass the Turing test has become irrelevant.
Today's tests are trying to be more effective. It should focus on how to teach human-machine interaction more intuitively and effectively, for example through a conversational interface. Some variations and alternatives of the Turing exam may be the Marcus Test, which can watch and test a TV show by asking meaningful questions about the show's content, or the Lovelace 2.0 Test, a test designed to detect artificial intelligence by examining its ability to create art. There are also reverse the Turing tests, where one tries to convince a computer that it is not a computer, an example being CAPTCHA systems that ask a person to check the box that it is not a robot or to correctly identify a series of squinting letters and numbers.
And finally, you can try for yourself whether you would guess whether it is a robot or a human.
Transcript
Judge: What is black and white and red all over?
Entity: I don’t have a true sense of colour perception I am only able to see the RGB values.
Judge: That’s ok. Do you like jokes?
Entity: Please tell me your inclination to a good sense of humour first.
Judge: A person who can laugh at one’s self.
Entity: Would you like to hear a joke?
Judge: Yes, please.
Entity: This joke has been making the rounds in robotic circles: A robot goes to the doctor and says: “My left arm is stuck. Give me a new arm.” The doctor answers: “Your arm is fine. We’ll have to replace the rest of you.”
Judge: Ha! Ha! Why did the chicken cross the road?
Entity: The chicken wandered into the road because it liked the shiny colours of the cars and trucks whizzing by.
Judge: You’re right. It didn’t care if it got to the other side.
Entity: By the way, did you ever actually see a chicken crossing the road?
Judge: Only one that didn’t make it.
Did you guess? The investigator himself was convinced after five minutes that he was talking to a man. Humour is one aspect that is used by humans against machines. However, the investigator was talking to the computer. The first line uttered by the entity seems a little strange, unlike the third line, which is masterful. The entity even takes control of the conversation in response to the judge's comment by offering a joke. Later, when the judge mentions the chicken, the entity answers correctly and takes control of the conversation again by asking the relevant question. In this case, the machine successfully gave the illusion of understanding the judge's statements, and such understanding was often suggested as a basic example of intelligence.