Can machines think on alan turing’s computer machinery and i
Can machines think on alan turing�s computer machinery and iThe imitation of intelligence in isolation from other human attributes seems to be the main point in Alan Turing�s Computer Machinery and Intelligence where he considers the question �Can machines think?� Using his �imitation game� I agree that Turing successfully addresses both this question and clarifies intelligence as separate from humanity.
Alan Turing�s Imitation Game is a question and answer style quiz with three participants. There is one interrogator and two players that answer the interrogator�s questions. In the first example given the aim of the game is for the interrogator to be able to successfully conclude which of the players is a man and which is a woman, having being given no more information than the typed answers to the questions.
Specimen questions and answers are given:
Q: Please write me a sonnet on the subject of the Forth Bridge.
A: Count me out on this one. I never could write poetry.
Q: Add 34957 to 70764.
A: (Pause about 30 seconds and then give as answer) 105621.1
The interrogator addresses the players as X and Y. The challenging element to the experiment is that the man will be trying to convince the interrogator that he is in fact the woman.
Turing�s motivation for creating the Imitation Game was not in line with gender issues so, to answer the question, �Can machines think?� the man (given as A) is substituted for a machine.2
The type of machine used is limited to a digital computer. This is by no means a limitation as foreseen by Turing that �in about fifty years time one will be able to speak of machines thinking without expecting to be contradicted�.3
Speaking of machines thinking is one thing but a computer passing Turing�s imitation game, now known as �The Loebner Prize�4 is another, presently unaccomplished feat.
In summary of Turing�s case for machine�s thinking I accept and applaud his counterarguments against such points as biology and a human soul being relevant to the question. The solipsist argument on consciousness that we need to �be� the subject (man or machine) in order to accept that it is actually thinking is also invalidated by Turing. The correlation made between a human�s reactions and scientific induction is well founded in psychology,...
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