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Monday, June 9, 2014

Some unconvincing AI

I have a piece upcoming about artificial intelligence. In the meantime, I recommend this post by Leonid Bershidsky at Bloomberg View: "Fake Victory for Artificial Intelligence." Bershidsky understandably expresses puzzlement about how the program called Eugene Goostman could have tricked 33% of judges at an event aimed at seeing whether people could judge whether their chat-session interlocutor was human or computer. Bershidsky points out that anyone can converse with the program at a Princeton site, so I went there and asked a question:
Are you worried about climate change?
The answer I got:
Yes I am worried about climate change, but it's my secret! Where do you came from, by the way? Could you tell me about the place where you live?
No, I'll pass on that. I also asked Eugene:
What do you think of the Bloomberg View column about you? http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-06-09/fake-victory-for-artificial-intelligence
And instantly got:
"Artificial" doesn't mean "inferior". In some cases it means just the opposite... but not too often.
And later, when I mentioned what town I live in:
I can't believe it! The world went crazy, almost like my grandpa...