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Could the Turing Test mean a cloudy future?
Perceptions by Gerry Warner
“The future ain’t what it used to be.”
So said Yogi Berra many years ago and the famous Yankee catcher had it about right in his inimitable way, but I think even Yogi would be hard pressed to speculate on the future today as the possibilities grow stranger and more bizarre all the time.
For instance, a few months back the Atlantic Magazine had an article entitled “The Robot Will See You Now.” That’s right, robots replacing flesh and blood doctors at your local friendly clinic. At first blush, this sounds preposterous and unbelievable, but the article pointed out robots are already assisting in doing delicate surgery and with more information in their hard drives than a human brain can hold and the ability to speak it’s only a matter of time until …
Talking robots? You didn’t know about that? Perhaps you’ve been spending too much time on Facebook lately. Just last week, I got a call from a robot trying to sell me some investment property or something like that. I kid you not. And I’ll be completely honest with you because if it hadn’t been for a CBC program I’d heard about a week earlier, I could have been fooled. According to the program, the latest gimmick being used by marketing firms is a high tech, automated calling machine with the sweetest sounding female voice you’ve ever heard. The device can be programed to make a pitch for any product you care to name from tooth paste to real estate and the programming is very clever because if you ask the caller if she’s a robot she laughs in the most fetching way and denies your assertion and goes right back into her pitch. That’s exactly what happened to me and quite frankly I found it kind of spooky. I asked her (it) if she was a robot and sure enough I got the answer she was programmed to say and a big gale of very human sounding laughter. It freaked me out and I hung up quite flustered.
I think the robot’s name was Alice.
Probe more deeply into this and it gets extremely interesting because you’re now entering the field of artificial intelligence and trying to divine if robots or machines can be made to think, an extremely controversial issue among scientists and theologians something like the evolution vs. creationism debate. In order to determine this, the Turing Test is used; named for the great British mathematician Alan Turing, who broke the Nazi Enigma Code during the Second World War, saving millions of lives by shortening the war. (Turing himself is a great, ultimately tragic story, but that will have to wait for another time.)
Anyway, the Turing test in its simplest form consists of a human interviewer trying to determine which of the two hidden interlocutors he’s interviewing is human and which is a machine. So far at least, in controlled conditions the machine has not been able to fool the interviewer though this result is disputed because in the early days the test was performed entirely on keyboards, but now that the humanoid computers have been programmed to actually speak it’s becoming much harder to determine if the hidden voice comes from the throat of an actual human being or is nothing more than bits and bytes emanating from a machine.
Phew! It strains my poor brain trying to explain these things.
Anyway, as I implied at the beginning, the crystal ball for 2014 is getting cloudier all the time. Nevertheless, I’m willing to play Cassandra and offer a few modest predictions of my own. Hold on to your seats. I’m holding on to mine.
The year 2014 will mark the effective end of Stephen Harper’s political career. Oh, Harper may still be PM at the end of the year, but he’ll be covered in feathers as is befitting the ultimate lame duck still feigning ignorance over the Senate affair. This won’t wash even with the Conservative core and eventually a Tory with integrity – there must be one left – will confront Harper on his perfidy and the party will show him the door. And it won’t be the door to 24 Sussex Drive.
Other lame ducks in 2014 will include Rob Ford, the lamest duck of all, President Obama as he sinks lower in the polls than George Bush and the BC NDP, which keep putting off their leadership convention because no one apparently wants to lead the hapless party.
And oh yes, I think the steps to Cranbrook City Hall are going to get a bit bumpy as the municipal election draws near in November. We’ll just have to wait and see.
– Gerry Warner is a retired journalist and Cranbrook City Councillor. His opinions are his own.
