Probably today is not a person who at least once has not heard of such a concept as the Alan Turing test. Probably the majority, in general, is far from understanding what such a testing system is. Therefore, we dwell on it in more detail.
What is a Turing test: a basic concept
As far back as the end of the 40s of the last century, a lot of scientists were dealing with the problems of the first computer developments. It was then that one of the members of a certain non-governmental group, Ratio Club, engaged in research in the field of cybernetics, asked a completely logical question: is it possible to create a machine that would think like a person, or at least imitate his behavior?
Need I say who invented the Turing test? Apparently not. The following principle was taken as the initial basis of the whole concept, which is still relevant today: can a person for some time communicate with a certain invisible interlocutor on completely different arbitrary topics to determine who is a real person or a machine in front of him? In other words, the question is not only to imitate the behavior of a real person by a machine, but also to find out if she can think on her own. No doubt this question is still controversial.
History of creation
In general, if we consider the Turing test as a kind of empirical system for determining the “human” capabilities of a computer, it is worth saying that the curious statements of the philosopher Alfred Ayer, which he formulated back in 1936, served as an indirect basis for its creation.
Iyer himself compared, so to speak, the life experiences of different people, and on the basis of this he expressed the opinion that a soulless machine will not be able to pass any test, because it cannot think. At best, it will be pure imitation.
In principle, the way it is. To create a thinking machine, one simulation is not enough. Very many scientists cite the Wright brothers as an example, who built the first plane, abandoning the tendency to imitate birds, which, incidentally, was still characteristic of such a genius as Leonardo da Vinci.
Istria is silent about whether Alan Turing (1912-1954) himself knew about these postulates; nevertheless, in 1950 he drew up a whole system of questions that could determine the degree of humanization of the machine. And I must say, this development is now one of the fundamental ones, however, even when testing, for example, computer bots, etc. In reality, the principle turned out to be such that only a few programs managed to pass the Turing test. And then, “pass” is said with a stretch, since the test result has never had an indicator of 100 percent, at best, a little more than 50.
At the very beginning of his research, the scientist used his own invention. It is called the Turing Test Machine. Since all conversations were supposed to be introduced exclusively in print form, the scientist set several basic guidelines for writing answers, such as moving the printed tape left or right, printing a specific character, etc.
ELIZA and PARRY Programs
Over time, programs began to become more complex, and two of them, in situations where the Turing test was applied, showed stunning results at that time. Those were ELIZA and PARRY.
As for the "Eliza", created in 1960: based on the question, the machine had to determine the keyword and based on it to draw up the opposite answer. This is what allowed to deceive real people. If such a word did not appear, the machine returned a generalized answer or repeated one of the previous ones. However, passing the Elisa test is still in doubt, since real people who interacted with the program were initially prepared psychologically in such a way that they thought in advance that they were talking to a person and not to the machine.
PARRY is somewhat similar to Eliza, but was designed to mimic paranoid communication. What is most interesting, the real patients of the clinics were used for its testing. After recording transcripts of the teletype conversations, they were evaluated by professional psychiatrists. Only in 48 percent of cases they were able to correctly assess where the person is and where the car is.
In addition, almost all of the programs of the time worked taking into account a certain period of time, since a person in those days thought much faster than a machine. Now - the opposite.
Supercomputers Deep Blue and Watson
The development of IBM Corporation, which didn’t think, but possessed incredible computing power, looked interesting enough.
Most likely, many remember how in 1997, the Deep Blue supercomputer won 6 chess games against the then reigning world champion Garry Kasparov. Actually, the Turing test is very conditionally applicable to this machine. The thing is that it was originally laid down a lot of party templates with an incredible amount of interpretation of the development of events. The machine could evaluate about 200 million positions of pieces on the board per second!
The Watson computer, which consisted of 360 processors and 90 servers, won the American television quiz, bypassing the other two participants in all respects, for which, in fact, received $ 1 million in premiums. Again, the question is debatable, since incredible volumes of encyclopedic data were put into the machine, and the machine simply analyzed the question for the presence of a keyword, synonyms or generalized matches, and then gave the correct answer.
Emulator Eugene Goostman
One of the most interesting events in this area was the program of Odessa citizen Yevgeny Gustman and Russian engineer Vladimir Veselov, who now lives in the USA, which imitated the identity of a 13-year-old boy.
On June 7, 2014, the Eugene program showed its full capabilities. Interestingly, 5 bots and 30 real people took part in the testing. Only in 33% of cases out of a hundred the jury could determine that it was a computer. The point here is that the task was complicated by the fact that the child has lower intelligence than an adult, and less knowledge.
The questions of the Turing test were the most common, however, for Eugene (Euegene) there were some specific questions about the events in Odessa, which could not go unnoticed by any resident. But the answers still made me think that the jury was a child. So, for example, the program answered the question about the place of residence immediately. When asked whether the interlocutor of such a date was in the city, the program stated that it did not want to talk about it. When the interlocutor tried to insist on a conversation in line with what exactly happened that day, Eugene denied that he said that you yourself should know what to ask him? In general, the child emulator was extremely successful.
Nevertheless, it is still an emulator, not a thinking creature. So the revolt of the machines will not take place for a very long time.
but on the other hand
In the end, it remains to add that so far there are no prerequisites for creating thinking machines in the near future. Nevertheless, if earlier recognition issues related specifically to machines, now that you are not a machine has to be proved to almost all of us. Look at least to enter captcha on the Internet for access to some action. So far, it is believed that not a single electronic device has yet been created capable of recognizing distorted text or a set of characters, except for a person. But who knows, anything is possible ...