Penn & Teller    PCC articles by Penn Jillette        Reprinted with permission.

Yeah, I Got Your Turing, Hanging

by Penn Jillette
There's some A.I. flaming going on in the Jungle. In case you can't get it from context, "The Jungle" is a little private BBS. It's a couple dozen hipsters that write to each other every day. It's scientists, comedy writers, artists, skeptics, magicians, a microbiologist and a DJ. We have an open forum and our guy from Bell Labs (If I said his name you might recognize it, he's the Elvis Costello of computer science . . .or maybe he's the Cool Moe Dee of computer science . . . I don't know, I can never keep that straight.) has been fighting with the guy from the Media Lab at M.I.T. about artificial intelligence. The rest of us Jungle beaters watch on and write our own little heart-felt messages about Uma Thurman verses Christina Applegate. You know the kind of intellectual environment and you know the basic arguments (I'm talking now about A.I., but you probably also know the basic arguments on Uma and Christina). It comes down to one question: Is it possible for machines to think?

This is kind of related to the Turing experiment and since Dr. Loebkin is now offering hard cold cash for machines that do this, I guess we'll all be paying a little more attention. The Turing experiment asks for a computer in a room to be indistinguishable from a person in a room to a person outside the room (I think the original test you were supposed to just be able to tell sex - Could you tell Madonna from Mick Jagger without seeing or hearing them? For that matter could anyone tell "Blonde Ambition" from "Steel Wheels" from the back of a football stadium?). If a computer could pass for a human it would be simulating thinking but is that the same as really thinking? Would it be self aware? Could it make a spontaneous joke? These guys go on and on. I don't know, I think I lean toward Uma.

This Turing test is really hard if the Dr. Loebkin people are trying to get a machine to pass for a sane, creative person. But we all have friends we love dearly that couldn't pass for human in a strict Turing test. Put Ozzy Osborne in that room and let Marvin Minsky type to him until he was blue in the knuckles and I don't think Marv would perceive any thought. Ozzy does demonstrate important human traits and maybe being sentient isn't an important part of being human, what do I know? My nightmare is the first "thinking" computer contestant would be a dead ringer for Alan Alda. But that's a needless worry. I've met the people at the vanguard of this science. The more likely first test will conclude with the examiner saying, "I give up, is Charlie Manson really in that tiny room?"

Maybe the day of computer-man isn't that far away. Here's an idea for a program even you could write and it's irritating and empty-headed, just like a real person. But I'm guessing you won't get dime one from the committee. Write a program that flashes "I can guess your age! I can guess your age! I can guess your age!" Make it flash in really pretty colors with groovy graphics. When a person touches any key it says, "Want me to guess your age? Want me to guess your age? Want me to guess your age? Want me to guess your age?" And when you type "y" it says, "Are you 1 years old?" And when you type "n," it says "Are you 2 years old?" And when you type "n" it says "Are you 3 years old?" And when you get the joke, smile just a little, and hit esc it says "I can guess your weight. I can guess your weight. I can guess your weight." And whether you hit anything or not it says, "Do you weigh 1 pounds?" And "Do you weigh 2 pounds?" And no matter what key you hit or even if you don't hit a key it says "Okay, enough fun. Give someone else a try."

This was not my idea. It's an idea of a friend of the guy at Bell Labs that says machines may not be able to think. He wrote the program so he could type it quickly into the demo Commodores at Kay Marts and the way the story goes it has neat graphics and everything. Now, I'm not a religious man, far from it, and I don't know what makes us human and what constitutes thought and I got no money riding on the Turing scam . . .but I'll tell you one thing: I think that program running in a Kay Mart somewhere pretty much captures the soul of pure comedy. And if not comedy, it's at least Howie Mandell.