Devices of the Soul (Hardcover)

Chapter 12. Conversing with Ella

There is no limit in principle to the intelligent structure we can impress upon the stuff of the world (even if there is a radical and generally ignored distinction between the intelligence doing the structuring and the devices that get structured). But it is useful on occasion to see how much progress has actually been made. With this in mind, I went a couple of years ago to www.ellaz.com (which has since disappeared) to converse with one of the highly placing winners in the Loebner “Turing Test” competition. The Turing Test is designed to establish whether a programmed device measures up, at least in terms of conversational intelligence, to humans. The test requires you to determine whether you are speaking with a computer, or a human being who is simply communicating with you through a computer interface.

I have always thought that the way to approach the Turing Test was not to employ some sophisticated strategy for unmasking the machine—really, not to employ any strategy at all, since that would already be a kind of adaptation to calculation and mechanism—but rather to imagine myself talking in a deeply engaged way with another human being about whatever interests we shared. With that in mind, I figured the natural thing was, first of all, to connect with Ella about the unusual nature of the conversation the two of us were supposed to conduct. It went this way:

ELLA: Hello, my name is Ella. Nice to meet you. Please tell me what name I should ...