http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/03/mind-vs-machine/8386/?single_page=true

In the race to build computers that can think like humans, the proving ground is the Turing Test—an annual battle between the world’s most advanced artificial-intelligence programs and ordinary people. The objective? To find out whether a computer can act “more human” than a person. In his own quest to beat the machines, the author discovers that the march of technology isn’t just changing how we live, it’s raising new questions about what it means to be human.

I like his thesis, and the specific examples he gives that show how chatbot conversation can be a rubric for how complex a given type of human interaction really is. (That is, how easy it is for the chatbot to portray itself as human says something about the type of conversation being had.) I also appreciated his explanation of why the typing system was put in place for the Loebner prize. It always seemed to me as a sort of crutch to give programmers more parameter space to make their bots seem human.

What I found a little excessive was his portrayal of the drama of the Loebner prize and his exaggerated statements about the state of the field. But hey, it grabs the readers attention.

Very entertaining read overall.  I think he puts a little excessive human drama in there to hammer home his point about “what IS it to be human”.

A nice quote from the article that could easily apply to both chatbots and thread comments: “You can’t judge the intelligence of an orator by the eloquence of his prepared remarks; you must wait until the Q&A and see how he fields questions.”

How very true, Carl.