Cutting Edge Computing

Google AI and the Turing Test May 12, 2018

Alan Turing was a renowned mathematician in Britain, and during WW 2 worked at Bletchley Park in cryptography.  He was an early computer pioneer, and today is probably best known for the Turing Test, a way of distinguishing between computers and humans (hypothetical at the time).

More specifically, the Turing Test was designed to see if a computer could pass for a human being, and was based on having a conversation with the computer.  If the human could not distinguish between talking to a human and talking to a computer, the computer was said to have passed the Turing Test.  No computer has ever done so, although Joseph Weizenbaum’s Eliza psychology therapist in the 1960s was pretty clever (think Alfred Adler).

The Google AI passes the Turing Test.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D5VN56jQMWM&feature=youtu.be.

I’m of two minds about this.  First, it is a great technical and scientific achievement.  This is a problem that for decades was thought to be intractable.  Syntax has definite structure and is relatively easy to parse.  While humans seem to understand language semantics instinctively, there are ambiguities that can only be learned through training.  That’s where deep learning through neural networks comes in.  And to respond in real time is a testament to today’s computing power.

Second, and we need this because we don’t want to have phone conversations?  Of course, the potential applications go far beyond calling to make a hair appointment.  For a computer to understand human speech and respond intelligently to the semantics of human words, it requires some significant training in human conversation.  That certainly implies deep learning, along with highly sophisticated algorithms.  It can apply to many different types of human interaction.

But no computing technology is without tradeoffs, and intelligent AI conversation is no exception.  I’m reminded of Sherry Turkle’s book Reclaiming Conversation.  It posits that people are increasingly afraid of having spontaneous conversations with one another, mostly because we cede control of the situation.  We prefer communications where we can script our responses ahead of time to conform to our expectations of ourselves.

Having our “AI assistant” conduct many of those conversations for us seems like simply one more step in our abdication as human beings, unwilling to face other human beings in unscripted communications.  Also, it is a way of reducing friction in our daily lives, something I have written about several times in the past.

Reducing friction is also a tradeoff.  It seems worthwhile to make day to day activities easier, but as we do, we also fail to grow as human beings.  I’m not sure where the balance lies here, but we should not strive single-mindedly to eliminate friction from our lives.

5/14 Update:  “Google Assistant making calls pretending to be human not only without disclosing that it’s a bot, but adding “ummm” and “aaah” to deceive the human on the other end with the room cheering it… horrifying. Silicon Valley is ethically lost, rudderless and has not learned a thing…As digital technologies become better at doing human things, the focus has to be on how to protect humans, how to delineate humans and machines, and how to create reliable signals of each—see 2016. This is straight up, deliberate deception. Not okay.” – Zeynep Tufekci, Professor & Writer