Could Alan Turing have gotten the idea for his famous "Turing test" from a passage in Descartes? In 1950 Turing suggested a test that could decide if a machine is exhibiting human intelligence. A person is placed in a room with nothing but a communication device and told to converse with who or whatever is on the other side of the communication channel. He is not told what is on the other side, it could be a machine or a person. He is to converse for a certain length of time, asking questions and talking as if to a person, perhaps even trying to trip it up with nonsense or ambiguous questions. If after that time period the person cannot tell if he is talking to a person or a machine, the "machine" passes the test and is said to be adequately simulating a human mind.
Toward the end of part five of Descartes' Discourse on Method, Descartes proposes an experiment by which one may distinguish a machine built to look and behave like a person from a real person. A machine could never create intelligible sentences like a person, even one of very limited mental capacity. The machine may speak in words in a limited way, like a parrot for example, but could never respond adequately to the range of all that could be said to it in a long time period. In particular, a machine could not comment on the fact that it is thinking about what it is saying.
This certainly sounds similar to the Turing test. First there is the goal of distinguishing the human from the non human. Second is the use of conversation as the means to discover the nature of what one is talking to. Lastly, both tests require an extended time period in which to talk to the other. Just a thought.
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Descartes Discourse on Method and the Touring Test
Could Alan Turing have gotten the idea for his famous "Turing test" from a passage in Descartes? In 1950 Turing suggested a test that could decide if a machine is exhibiting human intelligence. A person is placed in a room with nothing but a communication device and told to converse with who or whatever is on the other side of the communication channel. He is not told what is on the other side, it could be a machine or a person. He is to converse for a certain length of time, asking questions and talking as if to a person, perhaps even trying to trip it up with nonsense or ambiguous questions. If after that time period the person cannot tell if he is talking to a person or a machine, the "machine" passes the test and is said to be adequately simulating a human mind.
Toward the end of part five of Descartes' Discourse on Method, Descartes proposes an experiment by which one may distinguish a machine built to look and behave like a person from a real person. A machine could never create intelligible sentences like a person, even one of very limited mental capacity. The machine may speak in words in a limited way, like a parrot for example, but could never respond adequately to the range of all that could be said to it in a long time period. In particular, a machine could not comment on the fact that it is thinking about what it is saying.
This certainly sounds similar to the Turing test. First there is the goal of distinguishing the human from the non human. Second is the use of conversation as the means to discover the nature of what one is talking to. Lastly, both tests require an extended time period in which to talk to the other. Just a thought.