Question of the Week #4 - Due 10/5/2009

[Your answer should be at least 250 words in length. It is due by 11:59 PM on Momday, 10/5/2009.]

Background: If you only have a computer screen and keyboard for communication, how do you know if you are chatting with another computer or with a person? Well, that's one of the questions that the Turing Test tried to answer. The Turing Test is a test of a computer's ability to act like a human being. The Eliza programs were the first steps toward computer artificial intelligence and being able to pass a Turing Test. The test is: If you are chatting with someone and have only a keyboard and screen for communication, if you cannot tell if the individual on the other end is a computer or a human, then the computer has passed the Turing Test and may be said to be intelligent. For more info on the Turing Test, see the Wikipedia definition at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_Test The Eliza program is a kind of ChatterBot (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chatterbot for details).

Question: You will be designing your own Eliza program. What kinds of attributes should you program have in order to pass the Turing Test? When you are chatting with someone, what kinds of characteristics let you know that the other individual is a person or a computer? Can a computer really imitate a person? What about the social context for the use of words (which we will discuss in class)?