The Turing Test: Verbal Behavior as the Hallmark of Intelligence (Bradford Books) [Paperback]

Stuart M. Shieber (Editor)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0262692937 | ISBN-13: 978-0262692939 | Publication Date: June 18, 2004

The Turing Test is part of the vocabulary of popular culture -- it has appeared in works ranging from the Broadway play "Breaking the Code" to the comic strip "Robotman." The writings collected by Stuart Shieber for this book examine the profound philosophical issues surrounding the Turing Test as a criterion for intelligence. Alan Turing's idea, originally expressed in a 1950 paper titled "Computing Machinery and Intelligence" and published in the journal Mind, proposed an "indistinguishability test" that compared artifact and person. Following Descartes's dictum that it is the ability to speak that distinguishes human from beast, Turing proposed to test whether machine and person were indistinguishable in regard to verbal ability. He was not, as is often assumed, answering the question "Can machines think?" but proposing a more concrete way to ask it. Turing's proposed thought experiment encapsulates the issues that the writings in The Turing Test define and discuss.The first section of the book contains writings by philosophical precursors, including Descartes, who first proposed the idea of indistinguishablity tests. The second section contains all of Turing's writings on the Turing Test, including not only the Mind paper but also less familiar ephemeral material. The final section opens with responses to Turing's paper published in Mind soon after it first appeared. The bulk of this section, however, consists of papers from a broad spectrum of scholars in the field that directly address the issue of the Turing Test as a test for intelligence. Contributors include John R. Searle, Ned Block, Daniel C. Dennett, and Noam Chomsky (in a previously unpublished paper). Each chapter is introduced by background material that can also be read as a self-contained essay on the Turing Test.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"...a fabulous collection of essays that address the much-debated Turing Test as a criterion for intelligence and discusses the future possibilities of artificial intelligence (AI) in society." Biology Digest

About the Author

Stuart Shieber is Harvard College Professor and James O. Welch, Jr. and Virginia B. Welch Professor of Computer Science, Division of Engineering and Applied Sciences, at Harvard University.

Product Details

• Paperback: 336 pages
• Publisher: A Bradford Book (June 18, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0262692937
• ISBN-13: 978-0262692939
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.9 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,794,842 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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3.0 out of 5 stars Pure philosophy, December 15, 2004

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This review is from: The Turing Test: Verbal Behavior as the Hallmark of Intelligence (Bradford Books) (Paperback)

The Turing test is one of the most popular tests for judging whether a machine is intelligent, and is one that for many years was accepted uncritically. This has had both good and bad consequences for the field of artificial intelligence, but has certainly been good for the philosophical community. Debates on the Turing test have filled the philosophical literature, and continue to this day. Fortunately, many researchers in artificial intelligence have moved away from the assumption that the Turing test is a useful guideline for assessing machine intelligence. In the years ahead it may become merely an historical curiosity, possibly fading into insignificance because of the presence of (non-human) thinking machines brought about the very people who chose to ignore its validity or utility and got on with the actual construction of these kinds of machines.

This book gives a good overview of the history of the Turing test, includes three of the original papers of Turing, and also gives what the editor of the book calls "precursors" to the subject. As examples of the latter, he includes some writings of the philosopher Rene Descartes and Julien Mettrie. Many other papers are included, some of these written by well-known philosophers and researchers in artificial intelligence, and the editor includes commentary on some of these papers at various places in the book. Most, if not all, of the discussion in this book is purely philosophical, and therefore does not assist those who are genuinely interested in building intelligent machines. The book therefore will be useless to the collection of researchers engaged in the design and construction of intelligent machines. It will however be very interesting to philosophers, who are not troubled by the gigantic conceptual spaces that are constructed by the deliberations over the Turing test, and they will be able to find ample opportunity to indulge themselves in the proliferation of thought experiments and "impossibility proofs" that always accompany philosophical discussion of machine intelligence.