[ExI] What Does Chatbot Eugene Goostman's Success on the Turing Test Mean?

[BillK]

On Mon, Jun 9, 2014 at 7:39 PM, spike wrote:
> Ben, it has long been on my mind ways to better care for our elderly, especially those
> with mental impairments related to advanced age.  If you have never seen it, you will
> never forget the first time you witness an elderly person conversing with a television
> image as if it is a real person.  Regardless of the technical criteria surrounding declaring
> a winner of the Turing test, imagine the tool this current technology would give us for
> helping our elderly be less lonely.  We could set up chatbots to just talk to them, to
> just respond the best they can to whatever an elderly AD patient might manage to say.
> Whether or not Goostman can fool a third of sophisticated judges, it can certainly
> provide friendly conversation to an elderly patient.
<snip>
>
>

Dementia patients don't even need conversation.
The Paro seal pup robot is now in its 8th generation and is appearing
in care homes all round the world (even in the US as well).

<http://www.fastcoexist.com/1682409/a-cute-robotic-harp-seal-to-make-life-happier-in-nursing-homes>

Quote:
Paro is a cuddly white seal that squawks when you rub him under the
chin, expresses emotion like happiness and annoyance, and gives you as
much love as you need. It's a robot--but in some deep sense it hardly
matters. Paro makes people feel better, and that's the point.

It's easy to dismiss a robot, and worry about a day when nursing homes
cut costs by bringing in automation for everything. But people love
Paro, it seems; and he's especially liked among the hardest to reach
part of the population, like elderly with various stages of dementia.

<http://www.parorobots.com/index.asp>

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BillK