The Quest for the Thinking Computer

Alan Turing's decades-old question still influences artificial intelligence because of the simple test he proposed in his article in Mind. In this article, AI Magazine collects presentations about the first round of the classic Turing Test of machine intelligence, held November 8, 1991 at The Computer Museum, Boston. Robert Epstein, Director Emeritus, Cambridge Center for Behavioral Studies, and an adjunct professor of psychology, Boston University, University of Massachusetts (Amherst), and University of California (San Diego) summarizes some of the difficult issues during the planning of this first real-time competition, and describes the event. Presented in tandem with Dr. Epstein's article is the actual transcript of session that won the Loebner Prize Competition--Joseph Weintraub's computer program PC Therapist. In 1985 an old friend, Hugh Loebner, told me The intricacies of setting up a real Turing Test excitedly that the Turing Test should be made that would ultimately yield a legitimate into an annual contest. We were ambling winner were enormous. Small points were down a Manhattan street on our way to occasionally debated for months without dinner, as I recall. Hugh was always full of clear resolution. Turing, proposed a variation on a simple Four years later, while serving as the director parlor game as a means for identifying a of the Cambridge Center for Behavioral Studies, machine that can think: A human judge an advanced studies institute in Massachusetts, interacts with two computer terminals, one I established the Loebner Prize controlled by a computer and the other by a Competition, the first serious effort to locate person, but the judge doesn't know which is a machine that can pass the Turing Test. If, after a prolonged conversation at Hugh had come through with a pledge of each terminal, the judge can't tell the difference, $100,000 for the prize money, along with we'd have to say, asserted Turing, that some additional funds from his company, in some sense the computer is thinking. Crown Industries, to help with expenses. The Computers barely existed in Turing's day, but, quest for the thinking computer had begun. I'll then describe that After much debate, the Loebner Prize Committee first event, which took place on November 8, ultimately rejected Turing's simple 1991, at The Computer Museum in Boston two-terminal design in favor of one that is and offer a summary of some of the data generated more discriminating and less problematic. Finally, I'll speculate The two-terminal design is troublesome for about the future of the competition--now an several reasons, among them: The design presumes annual event, as Hugh envisioned--and that the hidden human--the human about its significance to the AI community.