This book gives the most comprehensive, in depth and contemporary assessment of this classic topic in artificial intelligence. It is the first to elaborate in such detail the numerous conflicting points of view on many aspects of this multifaceted, controversial subject. It offers new insights into Turing's own interpretation and is essential reading for research on the Turing test and for teaching undergraduate and graduate students in philosophy, computer science, and cognitive science.
What kind of AI? -- The big puzzle -- Knowledge and behavior -- Making it and faking it -- Learning with and without experience -- Book smarts and street smarts -- The long tail and the limits to training -- Symbols and symbol processing -- Knowledge-based systems -- AI technology
An exhaustive work that represents a landmark exploration of both the philosophical and methodological issues surrounding the search for true artificial intelligence. Distinguished psychologists, computer scientists, philosophers, and programmers from around the world debate weighty issues such as whether a self-conscious computer would create an internet ‘world mind’. This hugely important volume explores nothing less than the future of the human race itself.
These 14 stories contain, among other things, robots, alien planets, genetic manipulation and virtual reality, but their centre focuses on individuals rather than technology, and how they deal with love and loneliness, authenticity, reality and what it really means to be human.
A playful, profound book that is not only a testament to one man's efforts to be deemed more human than a computer, but also a rollicking exploration of what it means to be human in the first place. “Terrific. ... Art and science meet an engaged mind and the friction produces real fire.” —The New Yorker Each year, the AI community convenes to administer the famous (and famously controversial) Turing test, pitting sophisticated software programs against humans to determine if a computer can “think.” The machine that most often fools the judges wins the Most Human Computer Award. But there is also a prize, strange and intriguing, for the “Most Human Human.” Brian Christian—a young poet with degrees in computer science and philosophy—was chosen to participate in a recent competition. This
Can you tell the difference between talking to a human and talking to a machine? Or, is it possible to create a machine which is able to converse like a human? In fact, what is it that even makes us human? Turing's Imitation Game, commonly known as the Turing Test, is fundamental to the science of artificial intelligence. Involving an interrogator conversing with hidden identities, both human and machine, the test strikes at the heart of any questions about the capacity of machines to behave as humans. While this subject area has shifted dramatically in the last few years, this book offers an up-to-date assessment of Turing's Imitation Game, its history, context and implications, all illustrated with practical Turing tests. The contemporary relevance of this topic and the strong emphasis on example transcripts makes this book an ideal companion for undergraduate courses in artificial intelligence, engineering or computer science.
Historical and contemporary papers on the philosophical issues raised by the Turing Test as a criterion for intelligence. The Turing Test is part of the vocabulary of popular culture—it has appeared in works ranging from the Broadway play "Breaking the Code" to the comic strip "Robotman." The writings collected by Stuart Shieber for this book examine the profound philosophical issues surrounding the Turing Test as a criterion for intelligence. Alan Turing's idea, originally expressed in a 1950 paper titled "Computing Machinery and Intelligence" and published in the journal Mind, proposed an "indistinguishability test" that compared artifact and person. Following Descartes's dictum that it is the ability to speak that distinguishes human from beast, Turing proposed to test whether machine and person were indistinguishable in regard to verbal ability. He was not, as is often assumed, answering the question "Can machines think?" but proposing a more concrete way to ask it. Turing's proposed thought experiment encapsulates the issues that the writings in The Turing Test define and discuss. The first section of the book contains writings by philosophical precursors, including Descartes, who first proposed the idea of indistinguishablity tests. The second section contains all of Turing's writings on the Turing Test, including not only the Mind paper but also less familiar ephemeral material. The final section opens with responses to Turing's paper published in Mind soon after it first appeared. The bulk of this section, however, consists of papers from a broad spectrum of scholars in the field that directly address the issue of the Turing Test as a test for intelligence. Contributors John R. Searle, Ned Block, Daniel C. Dennett, and Noam Chomsky (in a previously unpublished paper). Each chapter is introduced by background material that can also be read as a self-contained essay on the Turing Test
Paris Review Staff Pick A Book Riot Must-Read Poetry Collection Soft Science explores queer, Asian American femininity. A series of Turing Test-inspired poems grounds its exploration of questions not just of identity, but of consciousness—how to be tender and feeling and still survive a violent world filled with artificial intelligence and automation. We are dropped straight into the tangled intersections of technology, violence, erasure, agency, gender, and loneliness. "Choi creates an exhilarating matrix of poetry, science, and technology." —Publishers Weekly "Franny Choi combines technology and poetry to stunning effect." –BUSTLE “…these beautiful, fractal-like poems are meditations on identity and autonomy and offer consciousness-expanding forays into topics like violence and gender, love and isolation.” –NYLON
In 1936, when he was just twenty-four years old, Alan Turing wrote a remarkable paper in which he outlined the theory of computation, laying out the ideas that underlie all modern computers. This groundbreaking and powerful theory now forms the basis of computer science. In Turing's Vision, Chris Bernhardt explains the theory, Turing's most important contribution, for the general reader. Bernhardt argues that the strength of Turing's theory is its simplicity, and that, explained in a straightforward manner, it is eminently understandable by the nonspecialist. As Marvin Minsky writes, "The sheer simplicity of the theory's foundation and extraordinary short path from this foundation to its logical and surprising conclusions give the theory a mathematical beauty that alone guarantees it a permanent place in computer theory." Bernhardt begins with the foundation and systematically builds to the surprising conclusions. He also views Turing's theory in the context of mathematical history, other views of computation (including those of Alonzo Church), Turing's later work, and the birth of the modern computer. In the paper, "On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem," Turing thinks carefully about how humans perform computation, breaking it down into a sequence of steps, and then constructs theoretical machines capable of performing each step. Turing wanted to show that there were problems that were beyond any computer's ability to solve; in particular, he wanted to find a decision problem that he could prove was undecidable. To explain Turing's ideas, Bernhardt examines three well-known decision problems to explore the concept of undecidability; investigates theoretical computing machines, including Turing machines; explains universal machines; and proves that certain problems are undecidable, including Turing's problem concerning computable numbers.
Programming Legend Charles Petzold unlocks the secrets of the extraordinary and prescient 1936 paper by Alan M. Turing Mathematician Alan Turing invented an imaginary computer known as the Turing Machine; in an age before computers, he explored the concept of what it meant to be computable, creating the field of computability theory in the process, a foundation of present-day computer programming. The book expands Turing’s original 36-page paper with additional background chapters and extensive annotations; the author elaborates on and clarifies many of Turing’s statements, making the original difficult-to-read document accessible to present day programmers, computer science majors, math geeks, and others. Interwoven into the narrative are the highlights of Turing’s own life: his years at Cambridge and Princeton, his secret work in cryptanalysis during World War II, his involvement in seminal computer projects, his speculations about artificial intelligence, his arrest and prosecution for the crime of "gross indecency," and his early death by apparent suicide at the age of 41.
