[ExI] New Improved Turing Test was: Subject: The answer to tireless stupidity

[spike]

Subject: [ExI] New Improved Turing Test was: Subject: The answer to tireless
stupidity

>> Similarly to Jeff's example, it might soon become very difficult to 
>> distinguish two humans trying to get each other into the sack from two 
>> lookup tables doing likewise... spike

>Spike, 

>This is brilliant.  You've just set up the scenario for a new and improved
Turing test. Why improved? It basically fulfills the >Turing test...
...

Omar you are too kind sir, but I cannot claim originality.  A few years ago,
a guy realized that plenty of college-age hipsters had never heard of Eliza,
the software psychoanalyst.  That was a toy that came and went a long time
ago.  I played with it some in college.  He set up an Eliza-like program,
which is easy to reproduce in excel with a good sized lookup table, then set
it to hang out in a teen chat room, to see if the kids would ever figure out
they were talking to a computer.  A few of them did, but most did not.
There was one striking example of a kid who poured out his heart to this
program for 55 minutes, apparently never realizing it was a machine.

That is a form of the Turing test success.  It made Slashdot headlines, but
I think it has been at least five or six years ago, long enough for everyone
to forget and have a fresh innocent batch of teens to redo the experiment.

Muwaaaahaaahaahahahahahahaaaa...

>...but potentially serves a reproductive purpose thereby influencing
evolution. Well done sir!

>Regards,

>Omar Rahman

Hmmm, that gives me pause.  Fortunately the kinds of mating I had in mind
seldom results in actual reproduction.  But I suppose it could generate
larvae, in which case we would be encouraging the breeding of people who
rely on machines to do the messy emotional stuff that is intertwined with
the mating game.  Oy freaking vey.

Well, wait a minute, hold that thought.  Perhaps this isn't anything new.
Consider Hallmark cards.  There is an example where we take the sweet gooey
feeling stuff that many of us here recognize we are not particularly good
at, and hire others to do it for us.  We buy the birthday wishes written by
others for a couple bucks.  Same for wedding best wishes, get well soon
cards, sympathy cards and so on.  We already subcontract emotional care and
feeding to others who are better at it than we are.

So I guess it isn't such a major stretch to imagine we set up seductobots to
look around on the web, get acquainted with, and prime prospective mates.  I
could even see setting the seductobot with one's own personality quirks.

Here's a possible innovation.  The seductobot, being tireless, can filter
through arbitrarily many potential mates, more than its human counterpart
could ever service with actual copulation.  It would be a little like the 72
virgins thing, only there would be more than 72  and they wouldn't actually
be virgins.  So one could set the bot to present the person as he *really
is* as opposed to the idealized version of oneself that pretty much everyone
presents if they hang out on lonely hearts sites.  One could actually
downplay one's virtues, as few of us actually ever do.  Then the potential
mate would enjoy pleasant surprises as opposed to disappointments as she
came to know you better. 

spike