[EDIT: Jan_Rzymkowski’s complaint about 6 applies to a great extent to this as well—this approach tests aspects of intelligence which are human-specific more than not, and that’s not really a desirable trait.]
Suggestion: ask questions which are easy to execute for persons with evolved physical-world intuitions, but hard[er] to calculate otherwise. For example:
Suppose I have a yardstick which was blank on one side and marked in inches on the other. First, I take an unopened 12-oz beverage can and lay it lengthwise on one end of the yardstick so that half the height of the can is touching the yardstick and half is not, and duct-tape it to the yardstick in that position. Second, I take one-liter plastic water bottle, filled with water, and duct-tape it to the other end in a similar sort of position. If I lay a deck of playing cards in the middle of the open floor and place the yardstick so that the 18-inch mark is centered on top of the deck of cards, when I let go, what will happen?
(By the way, as a human being, I’m pretty sure that I would react to your lazy test with eloquent, discursive indignation while you sat back and watched. The fun of the game from the possibly-a-computer side of the table is watching the approaches people take to test your capabilities.)
Suggestion: ask questions which are easy to execute for persons with evolved physical-world intuitions, but hard[er] to calculate otherwise. For example:
Suppose I have a yardstick which was blank on one side and marked in inches on the other. First, I take an unopened 12-oz beverage can and lay it lengthwise on one end of the yardstick so that half the height of the can is touching the yardstick and half is not, and duct-tape it to the yardstick in that position. Second, I take one-liter plastic water bottle, filled with water, and duct-tape it to the other end in a similar sort of position. If I lay a deck of playing cards in the middle of the open floor and place the yardstick so that the 18-inch mark is centered on top of the deck of cards, when I let go, what will happen?
Familiarity with imperial units is hardly something I would call an evolved physical-world intuition...
Were I using that test case, I would be prepared with statements like “A fluid ounce is just under 30 cubic centimeters” and “A yardstick is three feet long, and each foot is twelve inches” if necessary. Likewise “A liter is slightly more than one quarter of a gallon”.
But Stuart_Armstrong was right—it’s much too complicated an example.
Your test seems overly complicated; what about simple estimates? Like “how long would it take to fly from Paris, France, to Paris, USA” or similar? Add in some Fermi estimates, get them to show your work, etc...
By the way, as a human being, I’m pretty sure that I would react to your lazy test with eloquent, discursive indignation while you sat back and watched
If the human subject is properly motivated to want to appear human, they’d relax and follow the instructions. Indignation is another arena in which non-comprehending programs can hide their lack of comprehension.
This is weird. Yesterday it worked fine, today (in the same browser on the same computer) it says “Wolfram|Alpha doesn’t understand your query; Showing instead result for query: long”
Your test seems overly complicated; what about simple estimates? Like “how long would it take to fly from Paris, France, to Paris, USA” or similar? Add in some Fermi estimates, get them to show your work, etc...
That is much better—I wasn’t thinking very carefully when I invented my question.
If the human subject is properly motivated to want to appear human, they’d relax and follow the instructions. Indignation is another arena in which non-comprehending programs can hide their lack of comprehension.
I realize this, but as someone who wants to appear human, I want to make it as difficult as possible for any kind of computer algorithm to simulate my abilities. My mental model of sub-sapient artificial intelligence is such that I believe many such might pass your test, and therefore—were I motivated properly—I would want to make it abundantly clear that I had done more than correctly parse the instructions “[(do nothing) for (4 minutes)] then {re-type [(this sentence I’ve just written here,) skipping (one word out of 2.)]}” That is a task that is not qualitatively different from the parsing tasks handled by the best text adventure game engines—games which are very far from intelligent AI.
I wouldn’t merely sputter noisily at your failure to provide responses to my posts, I’d demonstrate language comprehension, context awareness, knowledge of natural-language processing, and argumentative skills that are not tested by your wait-four-minutes proposal, both because I believe that you will get better results if you bear these factors in mind and because—in light of the fact that I will get better results if you bear them in mind—I want you to correctly identify me as a human subject.
[EDIT: Jan_Rzymkowski’s complaint about 6 applies to a great extent to this as well—this approach tests aspects of intelligence which are human-specific more than not, and that’s not really a desirable trait.]
Suggestion: ask questions which are easy to execute for persons with evolved physical-world intuitions, but hard[er] to calculate otherwise. For example:
(By the way, as a human being, I’m pretty sure that I would react to your lazy test with eloquent, discursive indignation while you sat back and watched. The fun of the game from the possibly-a-computer side of the table is watching the approaches people take to test your capabilities.)
Familiarity with imperial units is hardly something I would call an evolved physical-world intuition...
Were I using that test case, I would be prepared with statements like “A fluid ounce is just under 30 cubic centimeters” and “A yardstick is three feet long, and each foot is twelve inches” if necessary. Likewise “A liter is slightly more than one quarter of a gallon”.
But Stuart_Armstrong was right—it’s much too complicated an example.
Your test seems overly complicated; what about simple estimates? Like “how long would it take to fly from Paris, France, to Paris, USA” or similar? Add in some Fermi estimates, get them to show your work, etc...
If the human subject is properly motivated to want to appear human, they’d relax and follow the instructions. Indignation is another arena in which non-comprehending programs can hide their lack of comprehension.
Ahem...
This is weird. Yesterday it worked fine, today (in the same browser on the same computer) it says “Wolfram|Alpha doesn’t understand your query; Showing instead result for query: long”
Still a useful reminder that we can’t take things for granted when being a judge in such tests.
That is much better—I wasn’t thinking very carefully when I invented my question.
I realize this, but as someone who wants to appear human, I want to make it as difficult as possible for any kind of computer algorithm to simulate my abilities. My mental model of sub-sapient artificial intelligence is such that I believe many such might pass your test, and therefore—were I motivated properly—I would want to make it abundantly clear that I had done more than correctly parse the instructions “[(do nothing) for (4 minutes)] then {re-type [(this sentence I’ve just written here,) skipping (one word out of 2.)]}” That is a task that is not qualitatively different from the parsing tasks handled by the best text adventure game engines—games which are very far from intelligent AI.
I wouldn’t merely sputter noisily at your failure to provide responses to my posts, I’d demonstrate language comprehension, context awareness, knowledge of natural-language processing, and argumentative skills that are not tested by your wait-four-minutes proposal, both because I believe that you will get better results if you bear these factors in mind and because—in light of the fact that I will get better results if you bear them in mind—I want you to correctly identify me as a human subject.