Announcements

• The Thinking Machine airs

• Today (9/6) at 4PM on channel 53
• Monday (9/10) at 3 and 8PM on channel 53
• Homework 1 due Tuesday, 9/11 – write up
on The Thinking Machine
• Lab 0 due Thursday, September 13

CS 484 – Artificial Intelligence 1

 Introduction to
Artificial Intelligence
Lecture 2
 What is Artificial Intelligence?

• Systems that think like humans

• Systems that act like humans
• Systems that think rationally
• Systems that act rationally

CS 484 – Artificial Intelligence 3

What has AI accomplished?

CS 484 – Artificial Intelligence 4

What will AI accomplish?

CS 484 – Artificial Intelligence 5

 The Beginnings
• 1942 – Isaac Asimov publishes the three
laws of robotics
• 1950 – Alan Turing publishes the Turing
Test, a means of determining if a machine
can think
• 1956 – The term Artificial Intelligence is
coined at a meeting at Dartmouth College

CS 484 – Artificial Intelligence 6

 The Turing Test
• Uses the "Imitation Game"
• Usual method
• Three people play (man, woman, and interrogator)
• Interrogator determines which of the other two is a
woman by asking questions
• Example: How long is your hair?
• Questions and responses are typewritten or repeated
by an intermediary
• Turing Test
• Machine takes the part of the man
CS 484 – Artificial Intelligence 7
 Strength of the Test
• "The new problem has the advantage of
drawing a fairly sharp line between the
physical and the intellectual capacities of a
man" (Turing, 1950)

CS 484 – Artificial Intelligence 8

 Debating the question
"Can machines think?"
• The Theological Objection
• Thinking is a function of man's immortal soul
• The "Head in the Sand" Objection
• The consequences of machines thinking would be too
dreadful
• The Mathematical Objection
• Given the limitations to the powers of discrete-state
machines, there are some questions to which it will
either give the wrong answer or fail to answer

CS 484 – Artificial Intelligence 9

 Debating the question
"Can machines think?"
• The Argument from Consciousness
• "Not until a machine can write a sonnet or compose a
concerto because of thoughts and emotions felt, …
could we agree that machine equals brain" (Jefferson, 1949)
• Arguments from Various Disabilities
• "I grant you that you can make machines do all the
things you mentioned but you will never be able to
make one do X"
• X = be kind, resourceful, friendly, …

CS 484 – Artificial Intelligence 10

 Debating the question
"Can machines think?"
• Lady Lovelace's Objection
• "The Analytical Engine has no pretensions to originate
anything. It can do whatever we know how to order it
to perform"
• The Argument from Continuity in the Nervous
System
• Given that the nervous system is not a discrete-state
machine, you cannot mimic the behavior of nervous
system with a discrete-state machine.

CS 484 – Artificial Intelligence 11

 Debating the question
"Can machines think?"
• The Argument from Informality of Behavior
• It is not possible to produce a set of rules purporting to
describe what a man should do in every conceivable set
of circumstances. Thus it is not possible that humans
are machines.
• The Argument from Extrasensory Perception
• Assuming the woman has ESP, she could perform
better on a test of clairvoyance than the machine
• Use a telepathy-proof room

CS 484 – Artificial Intelligence 12

 Recent Experiment
• Spring, 2005 3 undergrads from Simon’s
Rock College (Bard, MA) conducted the
first “gender-twisting” Turing Test
• Setup
• Round 1: Participant has 5 minutes to chat with
a woman and a man masquerading as a women
• Round 2: Participant has 5 minutes to chat with
a woman and ALICE
• Female chat bot developed by Richard Wallace

CS 484 – Artificial Intelligence 13

 Sample interaction
Subject: What do girls do at sleepovers?
Bot: They do their own thing.
Subject: Do you wear skirts?
Bot: Only when I dress up.
Subject: You are a female.

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 Outcomes
• 42 participants
• 23 didn’t give any indication that they suspected
ALICE was not a real person
• Some did suspect ALICE
• Subject: Are you a computer?
• Bot: Would it matter to you if I were metal instead of
flesh?
• Question that tripped up men and bot
• Subject: What size panty hose do you wear?

CS 484 – Artificial Intelligence 15

 What does it mean if a computer
passes the Turing Test?
• Can the computer think?

• Does the computer have a mind in exactly

the same sense that you and I have minds?

CS 484 – Artificial Intelligence 16

 Chinese Room
• Thought experiment purposed by John
Searle in 1980
• Given that we have constructed a machine that
behaves as though is understands Chinese, it
convinces a Chinese speaker that it speaks
Chinese
• Given Chinese symbols, it consults a look-up table
and produces other Chinese symbols as output

CS 484 – Artificial Intelligence 17

 Chinese Room substitution
• Machine is replaced by Searle sitting in a room
where he receives Chinese symbols, looks them up
on a look-up table, and returns the Chinese symbol
indicated by the table
• English speaker can now give correct answers to
Chinese questions without understanding Chinese
• Since Searle doesn't understand Chinese, how can
it be said that the computer understands Chinese?

CS 484 – Artificial Intelligence 18

 Systems Reply
• Although Searle himself doesn't understand
Chinese, it is reasonable to say that Searle
plus look-up table understand Chinese
• Counter example: he memorized the look-
up table before entering the room

CS 484 – Artificial Intelligence 19

 Robot Reply
• The reason that we don't want to attribute
understanding to the room, or a computer is that
the system doesn't interact properly with the
environment
• Solution: put the computer in a robot so that it can
interact with the world
• Reply: Cognition is not symbol manipulation.
Second, Searle could be inside the robot and still
not understand Chinese
CS 484 – Artificial Intelligence 20
 Chinese Room Conclusion
• The mind is not a computer
• Thus the Turing Test is inadequate

CS 484 – Artificial Intelligence 21

How would you show that a
machine can think?

CS 484 – Artificial Intelligence 22

 Additional Sources
• Generation5's interview with John Searle (2001).
• http://www.generation5.org/content/2001/searle.asp
• Eliasmith, C. Chinese room.
• http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/%7Ephilos/MindDict/chineseroom.html
• McCarthy, J, et al. A proposal for the Dartmouth Summer Research
Project on Artificial Intelligence. 1955.
• http://www-formal.Stanford.EDU/jmc/history/dartmouth.html
• Moravec, H. Robot: Mere Machine to Transcendent Mind. Oxford
University Press, Inc. 1999.
• Tompson, C. The Other Turing Test. Wired, 13.07, 2005.
• http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.07/posts.html?pg=5
• Turing, A. Computing machinery and intelligence. Mind, 59, 433-
460.
• http://www.loebner.net/Prizef/TuringArticle.html

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