July 28, 2004
Bill Wallow points out this Boing Boing article which claims that a modified Elizabot passed a turing test:
It turns out that pornbots are among the class of Eliza-derivatives that can pass a Turing Test (or rather, horny sex-chat boys are among the class of human beings that can't tell a chatterbot from a person -- other groups include psychotherapists, who, in one experiment, couldn't distinguish actual transcripts of therapy sessions with schizophrenics from simulated therapy with schizophrenic chatterbots; and the university student who mistook a chatterbot for his prof in the middle of the night when he IMed same for permission to extend deadline on a late paper).I'm not sure if the bot actually passed the test; there is a very real possibility that it was the humans that failed it. Bill add his own delicious comment along the same lines:
I guess I have to take exception to the notion that they couldn't tell whether the pornbot was real or not: I have to wonder whether they cared. I mean, pornstars are largely made of plastic, but people still watch them.A painful truth for painful times.



