The Turing Test (IC)

[Troubleshooter]

3:00 AM. The radio plays the first few notes of Also sprach Zarathrustra, the 2001 song, followed by a pleasantly dweeby voice. Reasonable, good-natured, and dreamily calm, it sounds like the kind of voice that would give directions in a library on Mars.

“Good morning, Freedom City. It’s 3 o’clock on Tuesday, and you’re listening to WHIT 102.4, the official radio station of the Hanover Institute of Technology. I’m DJ Elektron, and this is the Turing Test, our weekly exploration of the universe of music. As always, please feel free to call in with requests, questions, opinions, gossip, or attempts to prove that I’m really a robot. But first, let’s start you off gently with a little Sigur Ros…â€

Those who have listened to this show (or heard others talk about it) will know that the DJ plays an eclectic mix of music, but the real reason to tune in is the conversation. People call in with some very strange questions and stories, even for 3 AM in Freedom City. DJ Elektron never seems to be alarmed by even the most bizarre calls.

[Dariusprime]

A few songs into the first hour, a call comes into the program. The caller sounds like a woman in her 20s or 30s, and unlike the more unusual callers, sounds like she is both sober and grounded in reality. Her voice is mellow and contemplative. A tonal buzzing in the background suggests a cat's purr.

"Hi, is this the Turing Test? I would like to make a request please."

This one could be interesting.

[Troubleshooter]

"...and that was Untitled #3, from Sigur Ros' album 'Brackets.' Any linguists in the audience should be able to tell that the lyrics were not actually in Icelandic, but in gibberish phonemically-similar to Icelandic. Now it's time to take another call. You're on the air."

"Hi, is this the Turing Test? I would like to make a request please."

"Yes, this is. What's your request?"

[Dariusprime]

A teasing laugh echoed over the line, "I'm not sure if it is too mainstream or not, but would you play Orbital's 'Halcyon' please? I'd prefer the original 11 minute version over '+ on + on' if you can find it. The whole song has such a relaxing vibe to it. Thanks."

The caller went quiet for a moment, and the cat's purring continued, "And I just have to ask, why is your program named 'The Turing Test'? Is it some sort of inside science joke for the peps over at HIT?"

[Troubleshooter]

"Classic electronica is entirely within our purview! And I believe we do have the original version in the archives." There's a clicking noise, as of plastic cases rattling against each other. "It will take me a moment to find it, so let me answer your question in the meanwhile. A Turing test was an early method proposed to gauge the sophistication of an artificial intelligence. An observer would communicate with two hidden participants, one human and one machine. If the observer can't identify the machine, then the machine is demonstrating intelligent behavior - whether or not it is thinking, it appears to think. Of course, this show isn't a normal Turing test, but it could be considered a variant of a variant."

[Dariusprime]

"Why would this be considered a variant Turing test then? After all this is a radio show, not any sort of controlled scientific experiment," said the caller, "Plus how would you define intelligent behavior? How would you define a transition from appearing to think to actual thinking? Sounds as if the test is as much based on cultural bias and the intelligence of the observer. 'Fool me once' as I've heard."

After another quiet chuckle, she added, "I wonder how many humans would fail the test." Whimsy echoed in her voice.

[Troubleshooter]

"All excellent points about the nature of Turing tests!" The DJ's voice bubbles with cheerful enthusiasm, the most emotion he's shown so far. "When it was first proposed, in 1950, imitation of human conversational skills was a significant technical challenge - and had the advantage of being testable. How can you know if anybody is actually thinking, after all?

"And in the same vein, how can you tell if a DJ is a real person? Lots of radio stations automate their programming during low-listener hours. It would make perfect sense to have a computer run the station at 3 AM. Running a true Turing test would require two simultaneous broadcasts, one run by a human and one by a machine, so the variant we're using instead is the 'fly-on-the-wall' Turing test. Instead of interacting with the subjects, the observer eavesdrops on the subjects interacting with each other and then guesses whether either of the participants is artificial...

"Congratulations, and thank you for participating in this Turing test! Do you have anything to say to our informal panel of insomniac observers?"

[Dariusprime]

"I would say that the nature of a person is bound to the physical form of the person in question. This nature or intelligence is a product of material properties. Regardless of the complexity or simulation of human intelligence a machine may have, fundamentally these processes are always artificial in that they always mimic the original pattern. In essence, the material foundations from which the intelligence develops is not human and thus can never be considered human-like intelligence." Again a small chuckle echoed over the phone line.

Following a cat's meow, she continued in an even more rambling tone, "Considering the nature of current scientific understanding, Descartes' substance dualism simply does not stand up to scientific scrutiny. Mental properties must necessarily flow from material properties, as even simply modification of the material properties of an intelligence or other arrangement can significantly alter the so-called mental properties. They do not have an independent existence. By contrast the evidence of mental-to-physical modifications is much less striking. The placebo effect, for example, may have a mind-body connection, but this does not provide testable evidence for a distinct mental property."

"More simply though, I wonder why anyone would even attempt to create an artificial intelligence. Humans are the product of billions of years of evolution, and represent an unusual offshoot of a primate lineage. We are shaped tremendously by the capabilities of our brains, bodies, genes and environment. Hypothetically, an artificial intelligence would be unfettered from these restrictions and be far more capable and less prone to self-illusion, erroneous pattern seeking and perceptual distortion. Perhaps we want A.I.s to be like us because they would be comprehensible in a way a more enlightened system would not be. Perhaps the system, if unbidden to greater environmental and structural issues, would near a singularity of consciousness."

Even over the phone, her smile shined through, "Ever read 'The Last Question' by Asimov? Maybe both of us are robots, even if one is logically inconsistent. Besides why a robot? A robot doesn't have to think."