Re: misconceptions on computer science

From: Universe (universe_at_tAkEuniverceOuT.net)
Date: 08/18/04 

Date: Wed, 18 Aug 2004 06:36:12 -0400

*******EXCERPT FROM THE WEB ON TURING & TURING TEST

The essential thing about the Turing test

The Turing Test
1950
        

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        Andrew Hodges

Turing's prophecy that computers would one day think
Turing's 1950 paper in Mind, Computing Machinery and Intelligence, has
become one of the most cited in philosophical literature, and heads
the list in David Chalmers' bibliography of the philosophy of
Artificial Intelligence.

This paper is now available online.

Turing's claim
Turing held that computers would in time be programmed to acquire
abilities rivalling human intelligence.

As part of his argument Turing put forward the idea of an 'imitation
game', in which a human being and a computer would be interrogated
under conditions where the interrogator would not know which was
which, the communication being entirely by textual messages. Turing
argued that if the interrogator could not distinguish them by
questioning, then it would be unreasonable not to call the computer
intelligent.

Turing's 'imitation game' is now usually called 'the Turing test' for
intelligence.

Turing's 1950 paper has given rise to a large literature, surveyed by:

    * Chalmers' bibliography.

    * Robert E. Horn at Stanford University who has produced large MAPS of the arguments giving a 'visual language' for discussing whether computers could think. These maps form part of a larger project for mapping arguments.

    * This page of the American Association for Artificial Intelligence website discussing the Turing Test in the course of an extensive exposition of AI topics.

    * The Turing Test Home Page.

The central role of computability
The most fundamental statement of Turing's thought in this paper is
that the operations of the brain must be computable. The famous Test
is secondary. Furthermore, the main point of his paper was to put
forward constructive arguments for how machine intelligence should be
achieved.

Turing himself argued in this paper that the question of
uncomputability in mathematics was not in fact relevant. However the
philosopher Michael Polanyi, at Manchester in 1950, disputed Turing's
view. In 1961 the Oxford philosopher J. R. Lucas published a paper on
the significance of Gödel's theorem which also argued to the contrary.
Turing's view was defended by I. J. Good, and then later much
elaborated by Douglas Hoftstadter in his 1979 book Gödel, Escher,
Bach.

In 1989, Roger Penrose published The Emperor's New Mind which took a
completely fresh view of Gödel's theorem, connecting uncomputability
with the unknown laws governing quantum physics. His work Shadows of
the Mind followed in 1994. A good entry point into this argument is
the on-line paper Beyond the Doubting of a Shadow, Penrose's response
to criticisms of Shadows of the Mind.

My 58-page text on Alan Turing as a philosopher of Mind appeared in
1997. This is Turing, no. 3 of a series The Great Philosophers
published by Phoenix (London) and Routledge (New York). This includes
substantial extracts from Turing's 1950 paper.

In Alan Turing: the Enigma, I discussed Turing's paper in the light
of what seemed to me to be Turing's own doubts about AI — doubts
centred on the serious problem of where to draw a line between
thinking and living. The new text has other things to say about the
development of Turing's thought, stimulated by Roger Penrose's
discussion of computability and consciousness.

More details, extracts, translations, and reviews.
        
I have written another text for a forthcoming book on the Turing Test:
this is avaialble in my Publications area as

Alan Turing and the Turing Test.

My cat could think (I think) but she couldn't pass the test
Other arguments
But there are many other discussions of the role of consciousness and
the validity of the 'imitation' argument. Amongst these are:

    * A paper by John Searle: Is the Brain a Digital Computer, which extends the Chinese Room argument put in Minds, Brains and Science.

    * Stevan Harnad defending the imitation principle (1992)

Wider cultural criticism
Turing's vivid imagery has stimulated many people from beyond the
fields of computer science and philosophy.

Arthur C. Clarke was influenced by it, I think, in creating HAL for
2001.

The witty and irreverent style of his paper leaves a vivid picture of
Alan Turing's own intelligence, not filtered through academic prose,
but as if talking with Cambridge friends.

Or, perhaps, anticipating the techie, Trekky style of net-talk,
cocking a snook at the Shakespeare-brandishing culture of official
Literature.

You can almost see the : - ) and ; - ) in his symbols.

It is not at all like a stereotyped picture of a mathematician
thinking about computers.

A good sense of humour is essential to the computer's replies in
Turing's sample conversations.

There is also a definitely camp humour in Turing's paper, reflecting
his gay identity, and this has led to...
        Alan Turing in the bottom row...
Alan Turing in 1951
...of a 1951 group photograph of an
inter-disciplinary cybernetics meeting...

acting the cross-legged boy he was at 14...

Alan Turing in 1926
...at Sherborne School in 1926,
disgracing himself in English.
A pink herring
Turing started his paper by describing a game in which a man and a
woman compete under these remote-terminal conditions to convince an
interrogator that they are the woman.

This confuses the point Turing wanted to assert, that a computer
showing intelligence under these conditions must really be
intelligent. After all, the man-woman game, if won by the man,
certainly doesn't prove the man is really a woman.

What he claimed was that with intelligence, as opposed to sex,
imitation is as good as the real thing. Turing stressed that the
setting of the Turing test, with communication only by symbols, gives
a way of separating intelligence from other human characteristics. His
irrelevant gender game distracts attention from this point.

Another problem with this bad analogy is that it has led people into
thinking that the Turing test means a computer taking the part of a
man who is pretending to be a woman.

See this psychoanalytic view.
An unkind textual cut
A paper in Tekhnema, 3, 37-58, (1996) by the French philosopher Jean
Lassègue is a critique of Turing's work by a (post)modern textual
scholar. I am all in favour of considering Turing's thought in the
context of his life; I have stressed that Turing himself, in his 1950
paper, found it hard to draw the line between thought and life. I
agree that nothing in life is irrelevant to the question of AI, and
that Turing's choice of the imitation game scenario and other images,
must reflect aspects of his personality and personal history.

However, Lassègue's assertion is much stronger than this: it is that
the imitation game 'should be considered as an unconscious and
mythical autobiography and not as a philosophical introduction to the
main issues of AI.' To support this assertion, he has subjected
Turing's texts from childhood letters onwards to literary analysis,
drawing far-fetched psychological conclusions from very slight verbal
allusions. He has read my work with enormous attention to detail, and
given it much praise and prominence for which I am grateful, but
unfortunately I cannot agree with his extrapolations.

To mention one example, where I can definitely make a point of fact,
Lassègue has misread a sentence on my page 77. Turing did not suggest
in 1933 that his being circumcised 'greatly determined' his being gay.
(Circumcision plays a prominent role in Lassègue's theory of the
imitation game.)

        On the other hand there is doubt that Turing's very wide-ranging
ideas and provocative images have powerful resonances today when
computers have come to dominate the means of communication.
        This dramatic production by Jean Peyret, ranging over many issues
in science and sexuality, is an example of an artistic response.
Turing's democratic and open approach to 'testing' intelligence is one
that everyone is invited to share in and respond to.
Sexuality has been transformed between 1950 and 2000 ... and the
computer is playing a part in the process. The Internet is the most
erotic medium there has ever been.

Turing's iconoclastic images have certainly given encouragement to
feminist writers...
        ...who want to see technology breaking out of traditional male
preserves...
...something I agree with very much. Alan Turing was at a great
disadvantage in the macho-man engineering world at Manchester, as
illustrated on this Scrapbook page.

Also I agree that to write about Turing's life with any degree of
depth and honesty, it is necessary to express an imaginative response
which goes beyond quoting and recording. In my book I did this by
including poems by Walt Whitman and other allusive references.

    ...I say the Form complete is worthier far,
    The Female equally with the Male I sing...

The novel The Unwelding that I am writing will show more of my own
response to the Turing story. Drama and fiction certainly can express
issues which science finds very hard to handle.

Here is another theatre company with a response to Alan Turing's ideas
and images: Reckless Sleepers.

The Turing story will never be exhausted; there will always be new
responses in new words and images. My complaint is only when these are
put in terms of definite assertions about Alan Turing for which there
is no evidence.

Turning Theory into Practice?
This Scrapbook page has emphasised the importance of computability to
Artificial Intelligence in Turing's theory.

You may well wonder whether Artificial Intelligence has yet come to
anything much in practice.

But meanwhile Alan Turing's 1950 paper, full of life with its funny
dialogues, has encouraged people to experiment with computers much
more directly to imitate 'intelligent' conversation.
Continue to the next Scrapbook page to see the result of using
computers with a good sense of humour.

        
Continue to
the next Scrapbook page.

Where next?
Browse the Scrapbook: Previous Page | Next Page | Index

Alan Turing
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the enigma
© Andrew Hodges, this page last updated 15 March 2004

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****END EXCERPT FROM THE WEB ON TURING & TURING TEST

>From the work of: Andrew Hodges

at URL:
http://www.turing.org.uk/turing/scrapbook/test.html

Elliott 

-- 
What is characteristically definitive of process phil-
osophizing as a distinctive sector of philosophical
tradition is not simply the commonplace recognition of
natural process as the active initiator of what exists
in nature, but an insistence on seeing process as con-
stituting an essential aspect of everything that exists
-- a commitment to the fundamentally processual nature
of the real. For the process philosopher is, effectively
by definition, one who holds that what exists in nature
is not just originated and sustained by processes but is
in fact ongoingly and inexorably characterized by them.
On such a view, process is both pervasive in nature and
fundamental for its understanding.

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