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

spike spike66 at att.net
Mon Jun 9 18:39:17 UTC 2014


>... On Behalf Of Ben Goertzel
> ...What Does Chatbot Eugene Goostman's Success on the Turing Test Mean?

-- my H+ mag article

http://hplusmagazine.com/2014/06/09/what-does-chatbot-eugene-goostmans-success-on-the-turing-test-mean/

…(short answer: nada ;-p)
-- 
>...Ben Goertzel, PhD
http://goertzel.org



My short answer: algo.  {8-]

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.

Think about it, and while you do, keep in mind that most elderly have few or no visitors from people who are not also elderly and do not have AD.  There are a few nursing home staff buzzing about trying to keep everyone fed and diapered, but where is the mental stimulation?  Is it any wonder the patients decline even further and faster immediately upon entering that facility?  And why you are pondering that, keep in mind that you and I were born into a generation with fewer siblings and fewer children, so do extrapolate into our own futures my extropian friends, do it.  Gaze into that horrifying abyss.  

These elderly have few or no visitors; you and I will have even fewer and in most cases none.  No one will visit you when you can no longer care for yourself and must go into the facility.  Please do this, especially you younger ones: go to the local hospice or nursing home, you don't even need to talk; just go there, look and listen, then extrapolate to yourself at their age in their position.  Do it please.  

Then think goddam hard: what are we going to do for them, and what are we going to do for us?

I propose we get Goostman, set it on big screen TVs and let these deserving elderly converse with it, because no one else is talking to them.  Stop worrying if Goostman is conscious (it isn't) or wondering if it passes Turing's test (it doesn't matter for this application) for it is a wonderful tool in the here and now, to help give aid comfort to the dying, specifically the generation which faced down the Nazis and defeated them, for which we reap the benefits to this day.

spike





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