The game Watson was playing was non-interactive[1] -- that is, unlike with the TT, you could not change the later Jeopardy questions, based on Watson’s answers, in an attempt to make it fail.
Had they done so, that would have forced an exponential blowup in the (already large) amount it would have to learn to get the same rate of correct answers.
(Not that humans would have done better in that case, of course!)
Interactivity makes a huge difference because you can focus away from its strong points and onto its weak points, thus forcing all points to be strong in order to pass.
[1] “non-adaptive” may be a more appropriate term in this context, but I say “interactive” because of the relevance of theorems about the IP complexity class (and PSPACE, which is equal).
I’m not saying that Watson could pass, or almost pass a Turing test. I’m saying that Watson demonstrated a combination of great quasi-linguistic skill and great general incompetence that I wasn’t expecting to be possible. It proved that a computer could be “taught to the test” in at least some areas.
So I think we should keep open the possibility that a computer could be taught to the Turing test as well.
Well, yes, if you make the test non-adaptive, it’s (exponentially) easier to pass. For example, if you limit the “conversation” to a game of chess, it’s already possible. But those aren’t the “full” Turing Test; they’re domain-specific variants. Your criticism would only apply to the latter.
Are AI players actually indistinguishable from humans in Chess? Could an interrogator not pick out consistent stylistic differences between equally-ranked human and AI players?
The game Watson was playing was non-interactive[1] -- that is, unlike with the TT, you could not change the later Jeopardy questions, based on Watson’s answers, in an attempt to make it fail.
Had they done so, that would have forced an exponential blowup in the (already large) amount it would have to learn to get the same rate of correct answers.
(Not that humans would have done better in that case, of course!)
Interactivity makes a huge difference because you can focus away from its strong points and onto its weak points, thus forcing all points to be strong in order to pass.
[1] “non-adaptive” may be a more appropriate term in this context, but I say “interactive” because of the relevance of theorems about the IP complexity class (and PSPACE, which is equal).
I’m not saying that Watson could pass, or almost pass a Turing test. I’m saying that Watson demonstrated a combination of great quasi-linguistic skill and great general incompetence that I wasn’t expecting to be possible. It proved that a computer could be “taught to the test” in at least some areas.
So I think we should keep open the possibility that a computer could be taught to the Turing test as well.
Well, yes, if you make the test non-adaptive, it’s (exponentially) easier to pass. For example, if you limit the “conversation” to a game of chess, it’s already possible. But those aren’t the “full” Turing Test; they’re domain-specific variants. Your criticism would only apply to the latter.
Are AI players actually indistinguishable from humans in Chess? Could an interrogator not pick out consistent stylistic differences between equally-ranked human and AI players?