colonel@sunybcs.UUCP (Col. G. L. Sicherman) (10/07/86)
> >6. The Teletype versus the Robot Turing Test: > >For example, the "teletype" (linguistic) version of the Turing... > > whereas the robot version necessarily > >calls for full causal powers of interaction with the outside > >world (seeing, doing AND linguistic understanding). > > > Uh...I never heard of the "robot version" of the Turing Test, > could someone please fill me in?? I never heard of it either, but I can guess from the context: instead of a computer trying to fool you in ASCII, it's a robot trying to fool you in the flesh. That is, instead of just typing at you, it has to tie its shoelaces, drink coffee, sit at a desk looking busy, go home to the spouse and kids in the evening, watch T.V., and all the other things that real humans do. Remember, scientists aren't just trying to make things better for you. They're also trying to fool you! "She blinded me with science." --Thomas Dolby "She deafened me with silence." --Len Cool -- Col. G. L. Sicherman UU: ...{rocksvax|decvax}!sunybcs!colonel CS: colonel@buffalo-cs BI: colonel@sunybcs, csdsiche@sunyabvc
harnad@mind.UUCP (Stevan Harnad) (10/09/86)
>>> instead of a computer trying to fool you in ASCII, >>> it's a robot trying to fool you in the flesh... >>> Remember, scientists aren't just trying to make things better for you. >>> They're also trying to fool you! The purpose of scientific inquiry is not just to better the human condition. It is also to understand nature, including human nature. Nothing can do this more directly than trying to model the mind. But how can you tell whether your model is veridical? One way is to test whether its performance is identical with human performance. That's no guarantee that it's veridical, but there's no guarantee with our models of physical nature either. These too are underdetermined by data, as I argue in the papers in question. And besides, the robot version of the turing test is already the one we use every day, in our informal solutions to the other-minds problem. Finally, there's a world of difference, as likewise argued in the papers, between being able to "fool" someone in symbols and being able to do it in the flesh-and-blood world of objects and causality. And before we wax too sceptical about such successes, let's first try to achieve them. Stevan Harnad princeton!mind!harnad