New Statesman -- Turing Test
 

It the sense of the meeting that I should post every New Statesman comp? I knew there would be people here who'd want to take a whack at the clerihews, of course. But this isn't a poetry comp. (Although it could be, I suppose. A computer can be programmed to produce rhyme and meter.)

No 4212 Set by Leonora Casement: As part of 2012’s celebrations to mark the life and influence of the 20th-century mathematician and code-breaker Alan Turing, Reading University is running a special one-day event, Turing100, on what would have been his 100th birthday. This will feature a display of the Turing Test, a Q&A session designed to test the ability of machines to pass as human. If a judge cannot reliably tell machine from human, the machine is said to have passed the test. We want you to think up a Q&A session with anyone (human, animal or machine) to confound the judge. Max 120 words by 26 January comp@newstatesman.co.uk

Blimey, this sounds really tricky! Too clever for me, I think :(

(Roger/Bob? I bet you can do this!)

I shall wait for some long-headed Jeeves to explain.

Bertie

I'm confused. How can we fool the judge into thinking the conversation was created by a human when the conversation will, indeed, be created by a human? (This isn't my comment. I'm just quoting what Siri said).

Computer science isn't my long suit, but I think a Turing test works like this: The human judge sits at a keyboard typing questions which are answered either by a real human being or by a computer pretending to be human. (The answers are appearing on screen, so there's no voice to hear.) It's up to the judge to phrase the questions and analyze the answers so as to figure out what's software and what's synapse.

One way to play it for this comp (120 words doesn't give you a lot of room to move) would be to write an exchange with some recognizable human figure who has a notoriously robotic affect.

Aye, Chris, this may be beyond us mere poets. :D

Thanks though for bringing it to our attention. The best of luck to anyone who gives it a try.

For my own part, I think I would prefer to go Touring than Turing. ;)

Cheers

Chris http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3553/...f7f5973d_o.gif

Romney, for example?

Are you a person or a machine?

I'm laughing because I get that a lot. If a corporation can be a person, why not a mannequin? I happen to be both both corporate and plastic, which makes me doubly human.

Computers are people, friend.

Bertie,

Imagine Eliza, on steroids. Eliza was a therapist, back in the 60's. If you were lying on the couch, and you said to her, "I feel a great sense of ennui," she would say "Why do you feel that way?"

If you said "You always answer my anguish with questions," she would say "How does that make you feel?"

Eliza was very popular, but not very smart. Her whole brain fit on just a few screens. It turned out, to everyone's dismay, that coding a smarter therapist quickly got immensely complicated.

Twenty years before she was born, Alan Turing challenged everyone to conceive her. Turing, you'll remember, was your countryman, who helped crack the German war codes. Back then, everyone figured it wouldn't take very long, what with the pace of advances. After all, the cell phone in your pocket has more computing power than a computer that took up a whole floor then... ;)

But even now, no-one has written an Eliza that would fool even the most self-involved patient, lying on a couch and staring at the ceiling while he unburdened himself. This is your big chance. You can easily out-do George Bernard Shaw!

Thanks,

Jeeves

Eliza was a standard issue Rogerian therapist funneled through a thing that made her seem like a computer.

Rogerian therapy is one of the more effective approaches. Why?

Aha!
Largely, it is theorized, because it makes you actually listen to what you say and mull it over a few times. As a part of that, the nonverbalizing parts of your various hemispheres (wherever they are - right or left, up or down) are exposed to you as as outsider blabbering your highly sincere rubbish.

Then these nonverbal wigadoons of yours start firing their messages through your nervous wires to modify (maybe) that sincere blather and sincere behavior.

That's also why talking aloud to yourself isn't crazy. Unless, of course, there's a wire or a bug around.

Go, Turing, talk to Carl Rogers!

Turing Test

Can you do Q & A in rhyme?
I can. I do it all the time.

Tell me all about your life.
Trouble and strife, man. Trouble and strife.

Are you married? Yes I am.
Marriage isn't worth a damn.

Have you had sex with penguins? No.
It might be good to try it though.

Can Ed Miliband succeed
In leading Labour? Yes indeed.

He's the man I love to like.
You can't be serious. On yer bike.

Gotcha! You are a machine.
So are you. Know what I mean?

Turing Test

"How was your day?"
It wouldn't say.

"So what comes next?"
No lines of text.

"Is this a game?"
No answer came.

"Or just some prank?"
The screen stayed blank.

"Are you still there?"
It didn't share.

"Am I not linked?"
The cursor blinked.

"Enough! I'm through."
My words rang true.

"A man?" it guessed.
I passed their test.

Subroutine //sullensilence [GOTO ESHAUNRUSSELL]// Exit with string "Human?"

Call //sullensilence// when pseudorandomcycletruncated=11412.

Exit program.

Let's hope they don't include the title in the word-count...
 

Turing Test

This is a theoretical device
For sorting sheep from goats. Ticks will suffice.
What is your first impression of a cactus?
Prickly or Fibonacci phyllotaxis?
What would you use on an Entscheidungsproblem?
A dictionary or an algorithm?
What do you think a Banburismus is?
A cake? A tool for cryptanalysis?
Do you align yourself with Normal Types
Or chain your tea-mug to the water pipes?
Did you do you-know-what with you-know-who?
How should Society respond to you?
Will you take girlie-pills or rot in jail?
You may tick one box only. Pass or Fail.
CAPTCHA and Gotcher. Then Delilah’s voice
Proposes a subsidiary choice:
The Poisoned Apple or the Wicked Queen?
Which is the man and which is the machine?

I was wondering when someone was going to mention the apple.

Well, Orwn - somebody had to. I tried to do a funny but somehow it kept making me get angry and cry. Strange things, apples...

Ann, you got very nearly my full attention with that. Charming!

PS: John's is good fun too!

Romney is a person and a mannequin. Not that there's anything wrong with that. :p

Very affecting, Ann. Too good for this - hope it finds a nice home.

Ann, ditto what Frank said. A beauty.

Ann, that's lovely.

Pedro.

Thanks to everyone for such positive feedback on what I feared was a totally subjective reaction to the challenge. I've done a couple of tweaks since I posted it in the heat of the moment and can justify the changes in the light of later wisdom. I felt it had been over-dominated by all the self-imposed constraints. I had, in fact, considered constructing a Fibonacci Sonnet, but decided that Heroic Couplets were more in tune with the spirit of it.

This is a theoretical device
For sorting sheep from goats. Ticks will suffice.
What is your first impression of a cactus?
Prickly or Fibonacci phyllotaxis?
What would you use on an Entscheidungsproblem?
A dictionary or an algorithm?
What do you think a Banburismus is?
A belch? A tool for cryptanalysis?
Do you align yourself with Normal types
Or chain your tea-mug to the water pipes?
Did you do you-know-what with you-know-who?
If yes, continue to subsection two -
Accept the oestrogen or rot in jail?
You may tick one box only. Pass or Fail.
CAPTCHA or Gotcher. Then Delilah’s voice
Proposes a subsidiary choice:
The poisoned apple or the wicked queen?
Which is the man and which is the machine?

How would a Fibonacci sonnet work, Ann?

I think it's a Canadian wheeze. Actually a prose device, which works thus:

On the page, it looks like two paragraphs. Each sentence is made of the number of words in the Fibonnaci series. One of the paragraphs is longer than the other by one sentence. The Fibonnaci count in either parangaph can go in either direction. So it could have a first paragraph of nine sentences and a second paragraph of eight sentences, with the word count for each sentence in order being 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34; 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21. Or the first paragraph could be ten sentences long and the second paragraph eleven, with the word-counts for each sentence being 55, 34, 21, 13, 8, 5, 3, 2, 1, 1; then 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89. (Courtesy of Bruce Holland Rogers and Ron McFarland)

All it is really is a way of making prose writers think about what they're doing in the way that we formal poets do by instinct. And you can adapt it so it looks like a poem, but I think that's cheating.

Who knew? Unbelievable. This must be the prosodic equivalent of the widely celebrated Rule 34. In this case, "If it exists, there's a sonnet form for it!" ;)

Here. And here. (skip to the second one). And this one has a rhyme scheme.

It really *is* twenty twelve, and clearly the apocalypse draws nigh! ;)

Thanks,

Bill

Well done, Bill. Pity none of them are any good. You have to write one yourself. Go to it!

John,

Not me! I will leave that work to wiser souls and better poets than I! ;)

On the other hand, while doing research, I *did* find this little gem:

http://uncyclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/Turing_Duck_Test

The flowchart is especially illuminating! ;)

Best,

Bill

Brilliant, Bill. Everybody should consult this. Are there any other entries in the uncyclopedia? The very stuff of poetry.

John,

It's pretty accurate, and fairly comprehensive. You will especially enjoy this entry: http://uncyclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/Poetry

Which begins with this famous quote from Don Juan himself: “Poetry is like the glittering pink ocean. It sounds beautiful and delectable, but you really have no idea what is going on. I mean, glittering pink ocean? WTF?" ~ Lord Byron on poetry


And the article contains this definition: "Poetry is the art of writing incoherent phrases to suggest mystery and generally confuse people. It does this through diction, caesura, figurative language, and large amounts of illegal drugs ... Poetry is often written with the intention of attracting girls. ... Anything written about poetry is purely speculative since nobody ever reads it."

Thanks,

Bill

I'm crying fowl on this experiment. In the latter exercise, there are other reasons why "Turing" could not have walked or quacked like a duck. That is because he is obviously a drake.

If he had, under field conditions, displayed any of the characteristics of a duck, his fate might well have been determined by, let us say, more Drake-onian measures. I refer you to the precedents outlined earlier in the thread...

My method exactly, Bill, though I pass on illegal drugs. Gin seems to answer. I think the small readership, like those lovely Church of England churches without congregations, is a guarantee of worth. After all, millions read the ignorant, ill-written screeds perpetrated by whassissname, the perpetrator of the Da Vinci Cod, a truly wet fish.

This topic has now got cross-threaded, like the lid of a jam-jar. Oh, what fun!

I could show you a way to sort it out using postcards, a hole-punch and a knitting needle. Any takers?

Mark Zuckerberg is definitely a machine.