Question of the Week: Due 12/12/2008

[This question of the week is the last one for the semester. It must be 500 words or greater in length. It is due by 5:00 PM on Friday, 12/12/2008.]


You have run Eliza, one of the first artificial intelligence programs. You know some of its shortcomings now. The question of the week is: Will computers ever be able to act like humans and possess human intelligence?

Some background info: Dr. Alan Turing proposed a test to identify whether a computer possessed human intelligence. You have a human in one room and a computer or robot in another. You don't know which is in which room. You can only hear their answers. You ask questions of both. If you cannot tell the difference between the human and the computer by their answers, then the computer is said to possess human intelligence. For more info from Wikipedia, check here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_test