Eugene Goostman First To Pass as Human in Turing Test
By Hody Nemes for the Jewish Daily Forward
Eugene Goostman is thirteen years old. Eugene Goostman is Jewish.
He’s from Ukraine. And, oh yes, Eugene Gosstman is a computer program.
On June 7, Eugene became the
first computer program
to pass the iconic Turing test of artificial intelligence, tricking
several human judges into believing he was human. Alan Turing, the
father of computer science, conceived of the test in 1950 as a way of
measuring whether a computer could “think” like a human.
The achievement, if authentic, could be a turning
point in the long quest by computer scientists in the artificial
intelligence field to grasp their holy grail: a computer program that
effectively mimics the human mind in complexity, nuance and idiosyncrasy
in responding to human interaction.
But news of the feat was hardly out before it came
under furious attack. The push-back was distilled succinctly by
Massachusetts Institute of Technology computer scientist Marvin Minsky,
one of the founders of artificial intelligence, who wrote the Forward
simply: “No significance. Ignore it.”
Eugene’s creators are standing their ground.
“In the field of Artificial Intelligence there is no
more iconic and controversial milestone than the Turing Test,” said
Kevin Warwick, a visiting professor at Reading University who helped
organize the event, in a statement. “This milestone will go down in
history as one of the most exciting.”
A team of Russian, Ukrainian, and American-born
programmers, Eugene’s “parents” gave their program a backstory and a
strong personality to make it seem as realistic as possible. “We
created a 13-year-old persona,” said John Denning, one of its
programmers. “It’s got a potty mouth and it cracks jokes like a
13-year-old boy.”
“Bloody Mary party at 11 o’ clock!” a voice chirruped from the float to our left.
page.
“Our entire sixth grade class is going to Six Flags for the end of the year trip.”
When
we were thinking up names for our unborn child, we set on Charlotte, if
it was a girl, about half way through the second trimester. My bubbie’s
name was Cynthia, and we wanted to honor her memory with a “C”or “S”
name. When we vetted the name to my parents over dinner one evening,
months before my due date, my dad said he knew my Bubbie would have
liked the name Charlotte, which sealed the deal.
Like
just about everybody else, we here at Kveller love to get attention.
But attention is that much sweeter when it means an amazing 11-year-old
boy gets to share his story far and wide.
A lot of the time that I read Jezebel,
the preeminent feminist blog of our time, I find myself nodding along
in agreement with its stances of equality, feminism, and personal
choice, as well as its clever takes on pop culture (even if it’s a tad
too snarky at times for my own taste). Jezebel generally offers
commentary that I both recognize and learn from.
