Here's CleverBot, a Web-based descendant of Eliza.

I can define it that way if I want to. You don't have to employ the same definition. When something comes along that I can have conversations with that are as fun as the ones we have here, I'll certify it as meeting my definition if it turns out to be silicon-based.

I conclude from your remarks that you would recognize something as being a machine intelligence even if it did not pass a Turing test. That's fine, and I understand why; I just don't find it enough fun. Wake me up when we can exchange Three Stooges jokes. If it's that smart it shouldn't take it long

I left something out in my earlier haste.



I do not consider this to be inevitable. Likely, perhaps, but not inevitable. Considering that sentient machines may well be created by devising the learning firmware, if you will, and then exposing them to the same stimuli as babies so that they follow the same process, the results may well have similar experience bases. (At least as similar as one could reasonably expect in a Turing Test. A New Yawker in a dialog with a !Kung tribesman might well fail each other.)

Well, for that we would have to find a way to impose gender on the system and make sure it is exclusively male! I can't recall ever meeting a female who appreciated the Three Stooges.

I took your "every version of the Turing test" as covering all the valid cases -- was just pointing out that the "restricted case" of the classical Turing test wouldn't do anything for anyone. It was based on a misconception about humans thing.

I take your point and agree to an extent, but -- a computer has/will have a vastly different sensorium than a human being, and I believe that fact would reflected in its speech.

We tend to minimize or skip over that part of the feedback loop involved in consciousness that is influenced by our sensorium, but what we see, what we pay attention to, what we evaluate as relatively more or less important is influenced to a very great extent by the qualities and limitations of our physical sensoria. A being that routinely "sees" in x-ray and infrared, for example, would probably have to be specially trained to communicate about the world with beings whose vision is limited to the "visible light" band.

Working against this is the part memory plays in developing communication -- equally important, and a formulated memory is a memory. Speech is based on memory.

The Turing test, it turns out, is actually based on two elements that turn out to be not so closely related as Turing imagined: intelligence (per se) and natural language production.

The person who seemed to make the best run at this in fiction was IMHO David Gerrold in Harlie 2.0 (quite different from the first edition).

Anyone can get it "righter" when they get to rewrite 'er.

I am deeply disappointed that TD sees fit to rewrite his books for each printing; I was positively volcanic when H2.0 was released. I said so, at length and at full volume and with full command of invective, way back when on the SF or SFFAN echo.

Some kind soul bundled up the whole thread and sent it to TD. He never replied to me directly but I heard he was Displeased.

It's been two decades since I read either version, but they're still here on the shelf. I recall distinctly preferring the fresh and sharp take of the first book, with all its archaic hardware notions (none of which mattered a bit in the long run) over the laboriously corrected second book, with its VERY specific terminology and screen displays - now horribly dated. The second version did include the then-obligatory squishy wet sex scene, though, so I guess it wasn't a total loss.

I wrote a chatting program some years ago that did better IMHO than every other one I have seen since. I should dust it off and make it public so you guys can talk to it. I can't claim credit; someone else did the lion's share of the work before me, I just expanded it slightly. But it's based on a simple trick. Back in a bit.

Go here. I'm only going to leave it up for a couple of days because of the potential for abuse from spambots etc - I wrote this 20 years ago in an environment where abuse was inconceivable. It should definitely be showing its age plus a distinct British accent. But it will probably be more fun than Eliza.

That chat program was fun, Peter. Pretty good.