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October 13, 2008, 02:45 PM ET
Computers Getting Better at Disguising Themselves as Humans
Computers are becoming increasingly skilled at disguising themselves as humans in text-based conversations, according to the results of an artificial intelligence competition Sunday at the University of Reading.
One machine, Elbot, tricked 25 percent of judges into thinking he (or she?) lived and breathed. Elbot’s accomplishment inched computers closer to passing the Turing Test, where computers that surpass the 30 percent threshold are considered to be “‘thinking’ and, therefore, could be attributed with intelligence,” according to Alan Turing, who created the test in 1950.
Before the five-minute conversations, judges were not given information on whether the “individual” they were communicating with was a human or a machine. According to Kevin Warwick, a professor in the University of Reading’s School of Systems Engineering, judges scored all machines—even those distinguished as computers—as having conversational abilities between 80 percent and 90 percent. Each of the five machines fooled at least one judge. —David DeBolt
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