The day has arrived. Skynet, the matrix, HAL 9000, Data and all of those other creepy, super intelligent computer cyborg systems may soon no longer be just works of science-fiction. This week, a computer program fooled 33 percent of judges at the University Reading into believing that they were chatting with a real-life 13-year-old boy from Ukraine, thus passing the “Turing Test” for artificial intelligence. Despite an obviously fake name, “Eugene Goostman,” (why not just name him “Timmy Notacomputa”?), the program managed to chat so authentically, that many of the judges didn’t know they were speaking to a machine that was intentionally trying to deceive them.
Back in the ‘50s, technologist Alan Turing said that true artificial intelligence would be a reality if a computer could fool a significant number of those judging (like more than 30 percent) into making them believe they were talking to a fellow human. You can actually go here to talk to Eugene Goostman for yourself (though, the site has been down this morning due to heavy traffic), but we suggest you being nice to him. He may soon very well be the leader of humanity’s robot overlords …
