PAT: So tell me how Turing’s test works.
SANDY: The idea is based on what he calls the Imitation Game. In this game a man and a woman go into separate rooms and can be interrogated by a third party, via some sort of teletype setup. The third party can address questions to either room, but he has no idea which person is in which room. For the interrogator the idea is to discern which room the woman Is in. Now the woman, by her answers, tries to aid the interrogator as much as possible. The man, however, is dong his best to bamboozle the interrogator by responding as he thinks a woman might. And if he succeeds in fooling the interrogator…
PAT: The interrogator only gets to see written words, eh? And the sex of the author is supposed to shine through? That game sounds like a good challenge. I would very much like to participate in it some day. Would the interrogator know either the man or the woman before the test began? Would any of them know the others?
SANDY: That would probably be a bad idea. All sorts of sublimal cueing might occur if the interrogator knew one or both of them. It would be safest if all three people were totally unknown to each other.
PAT: Could you ask any questions at all, with no holds barred?
SANDY: Absolutely. That’s the whole idea.
PAT: Don’t you think then, that pretty quickly it would degenerate into very sex-oriented questions? I can imagine the man, overeager to act convincing, giving the game away by answering some very blunt questions that most women would find too personal to answer, even through an anonymous computer connection.
SANDY: It sounds plausible.
CHRIS: Another possibility would be to probe for knowledge of minute aspects of traditional sex-role differences, by asking about such things as dress seizes and so on. The psychology of the Imitation Game could get pretty subtle. I suppose it would make a difference if the interrogator were a woman or a man. Don’t you think that a woman could spot some telltale differences more quickly than a man could?
PAT: If so, maybe that’s how to tell a man from a woman!
SANDY: Hmm… that’s a new twist! In any case, I don’t know if this original version of the Imitation Game has ever been seriously tried out, despite the fact that it would be relatively easy to do with modern computer terminals. I have to admit, though, that I’m not sure what it would prove, whichever way it turned out.
PAT: I was wondering that. What would it prove if the interrogator—say, a woman—couldn’t tell correctly which person was the woman? It certainly wouldn’t prove that the man was a woman.
SANDY: Exactly! What I find funny is that although I fundamentally believe in the Turing test, I’m not sure what the point is of the Imitation Game, on which it’s founded.
CHRIS: I’m not any happier with the Turing test for “thinking machines” than I am with the Imitation Game as a test for femininity.
PAT: From your statements I gather that the Turing test is a kind of extension of the Imitation game, only involving a machine and a person in separate rooms.
SANDY: That’s the idea. The machine tries its hardest to convince the interrogator that it is the human being, while the human tries to make it clear that he or she is not a computer.
PAT: Except for your loaded phrase “the machine tries,” this sounds very interesting. But how do you know that this test will get at the essence of thinking? Maybe it’s testing for the wrong things. Maybe, just to take a random illustration, someone would feel that a machine was able to think only if it could dance so well that you couldn’t tell it was a machine. Or someone else could suggest some other characteristic. What’s so sacred about being able to fool people by typing at them?
SANDY: I don’t see how you can say such a thing. I’ve heard that objection before, but frankly it baffles me. So what if the machine can’t tap-dance or drop a rock on your toe? If it can discourse intelligently on any subject you want, then it has shown it can think—to me, at least! As I see it, Turing has drawn, in one clean stroke, a clear division between thinking and other aspects of being human.
PAT: Now you’re the baffling one. If one couldn’t conclude anything from a man’s ability to win at the Imitation Game, how could one conclude anything from a machines ability to win at the Turing game?
CHRIS: Good question.
SANDY: It seems to me that you could conclude something from a man’s win in the Imitation Game. You wouldn’t conclude he was a woman, but you could certainly say he had good insights into the feminine mentality (if there is such a thing). Now, if a computer could fool someone into thinking it was a person, I guess you’d have to say something similar about it—that it had good insights into what it’s like to be human, into the “human condition” (whatever that is).
PAT: maybe, but that isn’t necessarily equivalent to thinking, is it? It seems to me that passing the Turing test would merely prove that some machine or other could do a very good job of simulating thought.
CHRIS: I couldn’t agree more with Pat. We all know that fancy computer programs exist today for simulating all sorts of complex phenomena. In physics, for instance, we simulate the behaviour of particles, atoms, solids, liquids, gases, galaxies, and so on. But nobody confuses any of those simulations with the real thing!
SANDY: In his book Brainstorms, the philosopher Daniel Dennett makes a similar point about simulated hurricanes.
CHRIS: That’s a nice example too. Obviously, what goes on inside a computer when it’s simulating a hurricane is not a hurricane, for the machine’s memory doesn’t get torn to bits by 200-mile-an-hour winds, the floor of the machine room doesn’t get flooded with rainwater, and so on.
SANDY: Oh, come on—that’s not a fair argument! In the first place, the programmers don’t claim the simulation really is a hurricane. It’s merely a simulation of certain aspects of a hurricane. But in the second place, you’re pulling a fast one when you imply that there are no downpours or 200-mile-an-hour winds in a simulated hurricane. To us there aren’t any—but if the program were incredibly detailed, it could include simulated people on the ground who would experience the wind and the rain, just as we do when a hurricane hits. In their minds—or, if you prefer, in their simulated minds—the hurricane would not be a simulation, but a genuine phenomenon complete with drenching and devastation.
CHRIS: Oh, boy—what a science-fiction scenario! Now we’re talking about simulating whole populations, not just a single mind.
SANDY: Well, look—I’m simply trying to show you why your argument that a simulated McCoy isn’t the real McCoy is fallacious. It depends on the tacit assumption that any old observer of the simulated phenomenon is equally able to assess what’s going on. But, in act, it may take an observer with a special vantage point to recognize what is going on. In this case, it takes special “computational glasses” to see the rain, and the winds, and so on.
PAT: “Computational Glasses”? I don’t know what you’re talking about!