Eugene Goostman First To Pass as Human in Turing Test
By Hody Nemes for the Jewish Daily Forward
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.”
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