whm@arizona.UUCP (11/29/83)
Turing sounds interesting; how about some more details to convince us
we should go out and get the book?
Bill Mitchell
whm.arizona@rand-relay
{kpno,mcnc,utah-cs}!arizona!whmwpl@burdvax.UUCP (William P Loftus) (10/28/86)
I'm looking for a definition of Turing; can anyone give me a few references? -- William P Loftus UUCP: wpl@burdvax, sword@excalibur SDC R&D/Software Technology ARPA: Paoli, PA 19301 BITNET: 215-648-7222 (work) 215-646-8434 (home) 215-628-2067 (home, yet again) Disclaimer : I hereby deny it.
steiny@scc.UUCP (Don Steiny) (10/29/86)
In article <2778@burdvax.UUCP>, wpl@burdvax.UUCP (William P Loftus) writes: > > I'm looking for a definition of Turing; can anyone give me > a few references? > Alan Turing is a person. He was born June 23, 1912 and he commited suicide in 1954 over hassels brought on by the discovery that he was a homosexual. His contributions are the base of modern computation. Turing machines, abstract mathematical models he invented, have been proved to be equivilant to any computer. The definition of an algorithm is "a Turing machine that stops." The book about him is *Alan Turing - the enigma*, by Andrew Hodges. It was published in 1983 by Simon and Schuster." Here is his famous paper from which the idea of a "Turing Test" is derived: ____________________________________________________________ THE IMITATION GAME A. M. Turing[1] I propose to consider the question, 'Can machines think?' This should begin with definitions of the meaning of the terms 'machine' and 'think'. The definitions might be framed so as to reflect so far as possible the normal use of the words, but this attitude is dangerous. If the meaning of the words 'machine' and 'think' are to be found by exa- mining how they are commonly used it is difficult to escape the conclusion that the meaning and the answer to the ques- tion, 'Can machines think?' is to be sought in a statistical survey such as a Gallup poll. But this is absurd. Instead of attempting such a definition I shall replace the question by another, which is closely related to it and is expressed in relatively unambiguous words. The new form of the problem can be described in terms of a game which we call the 'imitation game'. It is played with three people, a man (A), a woman (B), and an interroga- tor (C) who may be of either sex. The interrogator stays in a room apart from the other two. The object of the game for the interrogator is to determine which of the other two is the man and which is the woman. He knows them by labels X and Y, and at the end of the game he says either 'X is A and Y is B' or 'X is B and Y is A'. The interrogator is allowed to put questions to A and B thus: C: Will X please tell me the length of his or her hair? Now suppose X is actually A, then A must answer. it is A's object in the game to try and cause C to make the wrong identification. His answer might therefore be 'My hair is shingled, and the longest strands are about nine inches long.' In order that tones of voice may not help the interro- gator the answers should be written, or better still, typewritten. The ideal arrangement is to have a teleprinter communicating between the two rooms. Alternatively the question and answers can be repeated by an intermediary. The object of the game for the third player (B) is to help the interrogator. The best strategy for her is probably to give truthful answers. She can add such things as 'I am the woman, don't listen to him!' to her answers, but it will ____________________ The Imitation Game, A. M. Turing; *The Compleat Computer*, Den- nie L. Van Tassel (UCSC), S.R.A. inc. p.165 avail nothing as the man can make similar remarks. We now ask the question, 'What will happen when a machine takes the part of A in this game?' Will the interro- gator decide wrongly as often when the game is played like this as he does when the game is played between a man and a woman? These questions replace our original, 'Can machines think?' CRITIQUE OF THE NEW PROBLEM. As well as asking, 'What is the answer to this new form of the question', one may ask, 'Is this new question a worthy one to investigate?' This latter question we investigate without further ado, thereby cutting short an infinite regress. The new problem has the advantage of drawing a fairly sharp line between the physical and the intellectual capaci- ties of a man. No engineer or chemist claims to be able to produce a material which is indistinguishable from the human skin. It is possible that at some time this might be done, but even supposing this invention available we should feel there was little point in trying to make a 'thinking machine' more human by dressing it up in such artificial flesh. The form in which we have set the problem reflects this fact in the condition which prevents the interrogator from seeing or touching the other competitors, or hearing their voices. Some other advantages of the proposed cri- terion may be shown up by specimen questions and answers. Thus: Q: Please write me a sonnet on the subject of the Forth Bridge. A: Count me out on this one. I could never write poetry. Q: Add 34957 to 70764 A: (Pause about 30 seconds and then give as answer) 105621. Q: Do you play chess? A: Yes. Q: I have K at my K1, and no other pieces. You have only K at K6 and R at R1. It is your move. What do you play? A: (After a pause of 15 seconds) R-R8 mate. The question and answer method seems to be suitable for introducing almost any one of the fields of human endeavor that we wish to include. We do not wish to penalise the machine for its inability to shine in beauty competitions, nor to penalise a man for losing a race against an aero- plane. The conditons of our game make these disabilities irrelevant. The 'witnesses' can brag, if they consider it advisable, as much as they please about their charms, strength or heroism, but the interrogator cannot demand practical demonstrations. The game may perhaps be criticised on the ground that the odds are weighted too heavily against the machine. If the man were to try and pretend to be the machine he would clearly make a very poor showing. He would be given away at once by slowness and inaccuracy in arithmetic. May not machines carry out something which ought to be described as thinking but which is very different from what a man does? This objection is a very strong one, but at least we can say that if, nevertheless, a machine can be constructed to play the imitation game satisfactorily, we need not be troubled by this objection. It might be urged that when playing the 'imitation game' the best strategy for the machine may possibly be something other than imitation of the behavior of a man. This may be, but I think it is unlikely that there is any great effect of this kind. In any case there is no intention to investigate here the theory of the game, and it will be assumed that the best strategy is to try to provide answers that would naturally be given by a man. ____________________________________________________________ Turing is one of the famous fathers of modern comput- ing. This article is also famous among computer circles. The game refered to here is called "Turing's test," and is a goal of many researchers. So far, no one has achieved this goal, there are still no computer programs that can fool a person into thinking that they are talking to a human. -- scc!steiny Don Steiny @ Don Steiny Software 109 Torrey Pine Terrace Santa Cruz, Calif. 95060 (408) 425-0382
perelgut@utai.UUCP (10/30/86)
The Turing programming language was developed in 1982-3 at the University of Toronto by professors R.C. Holt and J.R. Cordy (currently at Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario). Turing is easier to use than BASIC and supports a richer set of instructions than Pascal. It has been the main teaching language at the University of Toronto since 1983 and has been used to teach over 10,000 students here and at York University. It is also used at a few other universities in various courses. For more information, you can contact: distrib@utcsri CSRI Distribution Manager University of Toronto 10 King's College Rd, SF2002 Toronto, Ontario M5S 1A4 Information available includes technical reports: The Turing Language Report, CSRI-153 Design Goals for the Turing Programming Language, CSRI-187 Features of the Turing Programming Language, CSRI-186 The Formal Semantics of Turing Programs, CSRI-182 You can also request a copy of the PC-Turing Interpreter Demo Diskette for IBM PC compatibles running MS-DOS with at least 512K RAM. -- Stephen Perelgut Computer Systems Research Institute, University of Toronto Licence is granted to retransmit this message so long as the body, Subject, addressee's and sender are not altered in any way. This message is not to be transmitted to anyone other than the original adressee's.
naim@nucsrl.UUCP (Naim Abdullah) (10/31/86)
/ nucsrl:net.lang / steiny@scc.UUCP (Don Steiny) / 11:35 am Oct 29, 1986 / >In article <2778@burdvax.UUCP>, wpl@burdvax.UUCP (William P Loftus) writes: >> >> I'm looking for a definition of Turing; can anyone give me >> a few references? >> > Alan Turing is a person. Yes Alan Turing was a person but I think the original poster was referring to the Turing programming language (since it was posted in net.lang). Turing (which was named in honour of Alan Turing) is a general purpose programming language. Although it was designed mainly for teaching, it is flexible enough to be used in production work. It was designed by Holt & Cordy at the Universit of Toronto in 1983 (I think). I have used Turing (having been a student at U. of T.) and can testify that it has a nice, clean syntax and it is a pleasure to write programs in it. It grows on you very well. You can obtain information about Turing by sending mail to: ihnp4!utcsri!distrib (or try utcsri!turing) Turing also has a formal airtight description and a textbook describing it. No doubt somebody from U. of T. can give you the exact refs. Disclaimer: I am not associated in any way with U. of T.or Turing other than having used Turing during my undergraduate years. Naim Abdullah Dept. of EECS, Northwestern University { ihnp4, chinet }!nucsrl!naim
steiny@scc.UUCP (Don Steiny) (11/01/86)
** I posted Turing's paper on his test for intelligence to this group. There has been a discussion about Turing the person going on in net.ai and I thought I was contributing to that. Unfortunately I got a head of myself and responded to a request about Turing the language. There was nothing in the middle (no intervening news). Sorry about that. -- scc!steiny Don Steiny @ Don Steiny Software 109 Torrey Pine Terrace Santa Cruz, Calif. 95060 (408) 425-0382
storm@diku.UUCP (Kim Fabricius Storm) (11/05/86)
In article <779@scc.UUCP> steiny@scc.UUCP (Don Steiny) writes: > Here is his famous paper from which the idea of a "Turing >Test" is derived: > THE IMITATION GAME > A. M. Turing[1] >I propose to consider the question, 'Can machines think?' >This should begin with definitions of the meaning of the >terms 'machine' and 'think'. > ... > But this is absurd. Instead >of attempting such a definition I shall replace the question >by another, which is closely related to it and is expressed >in relatively unambiguous words. > > ... The use of Turing's test for deciding the answer to the question "Can machines think?" was recently rejected by Peter Naur in an article published in "BIT 26 (1986), pp. 175-187". To quote from the conclusion of the article: (1) [...] the phrase "Can X think?" is [...] meaningless for any X. (2) The restirctions imposed on [...] Turing's test [...] have no relation to any humanoid characteristics. (3) The awareness that each of us has of our fellow being's nature [...] cannot be reduced to, or expressed in terms of, any particular tests or games. The article is highly recommended! -- Kim F. Storm, storm@diku.UUCP (seismo!mcvax!diku!storm) Institute of Datalogy(=CS), U of Copenhagen, Universitetsparken 1, DK-2100 OE