Thor’s Day, January 16: A Turing Test
EQ: Can you tell from chatting with a computer that it IS a computer?
· Welcome! Gather pen/pencil, paper, yesterday’s work, wits!
· Opening Freewrite: Society, Selfhood, and Conversation
· Review of Turing and his Test
· ELIZA: A Turing Test
o Compu-therapy
o Freewrite about it
· TOMORROW – Ontology and Civil Rights
ELACC12RI3: Analyze and explain how individuals, ideas, or events interact and develop
ELACC12RL4-RI4: Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in text
ELACC12RL6: Distinguish what is directly stated in a text from what is really meant
ELACC12RI6: Determine an author’s point of view or purpose in a text
ELACC12RI8: Delineate and evaluate the reasoning in seminal texts of World Literature
ELACC12RL-RI9: Analyze for theme, purpose rhetoric, and how texts treat similar themes or topics
ELACC12W1: Write arguments to support claims in an analysis of substantive topics or texts
ELACC12W2: Write informative/explanatory texts to examine and convey complex ideas
ELACC12W4: Produce clear and coherent writing appropriate to task, purpose, and audience
ELACC12W9: Draw evidence from literary or informational texts to support analysis
ELACC12W10: Write routinely over extended and shorter time frames
ELACC12SL1: Initiate and participate effectively in a range of collaborative discussions
ELACC12SL3: Evaluate a speaker’s point of view, reasoning, evidence and rhetoric
ELACC12SL6: Adapt speech to a variety of tasks, demonstrating a command of formal English
ELACC12L1: Demonstrate standard English grammar and usage in speaking and writing.
ELACC12L3: Demonstrate understanding of how language functions in different contexts
ELACC12L4: Determine/clarify meaning of unknown and multiple-meaning words and phrases
ELACC12L5: Demonstrate understanding of figurative language, word relationships, nuances
Opening Freewrite (60 words) – Do whichever is appropriate:
IF YOU DID NOT FREEWRITE YESTERDAY:
We have discussed Selfhood as something an individual achieves through her/his choices. Now answer the question which Jaron Lanier, considering Alan Turing, asked in the film yesterday: What does it take for others to recognize one’s Selfhood?
OR
IF YOU DID THAT FREEWRITE YESTERDAY:
What kind of conversation, spoken or texted, do you find most interesting?
Remember yesterday:
Alan Turing
(1912 – 1954)
· The Turing Prize
· “Invented” the modern computer – first software, hardware, applications, all of it
· Cracked the Enigma Code – won WW2
· Arrested for being gay; forced into hormone therapy; suicide by bite of apple
· The Turing Test
The Turing Test
· Alan Turing postulated that if a computer could speak with enough sophistication to fool a competent judge into thinking it’s a person, then perhaps we could consider that computer a person and grant it Selfhood.
· A computer or program is said to “pass the Turing Test” if conversations with it fool a sufficient number of experts into believing they are speaking to a person.
· So far, no computer or program is widely considered to have passed a rigorously-applied Turing Test, but programmers are getting closer.
· An early attempt at such a program was ELIZA, created at MIT in 1966 to simulate conversation a patient might have with a psychotherapist.
ELIZA: Compu-therapy
Today, you’re going to play around with a version of ELIZA, and use the experience to gain insight into what, exactly, characterizes human thinking, language, and interaction.
As you converse with ELIZA, consider these questions:
· What does ELIZA “say” that a human WOULD say?
· What does ELIZA “say” that a human WOULD NOT say?
· What does ELIZA NOT “say” that a human WOULD say?
NOW – Google the words “eliza turing therapist” and click around until you find a version that works (different computers’ different access codes and software mean that some folks use one page, some another). “Speak” to ELIZA for a while. Be prepared for frustration, humor, and just maybe some real answers to your real problems!
After you’ve gone through twenty questions exchanges or more, see below for today’s freewrite.
CLOSING FREEWRITE (100 wds, incl. quote):
As you conversed with ELIZA, I asked you to consider these questions:
· What does ELIZA “say” that a human WOULD say?
· What does ELIZA “say” that a human WOULD NOT say?
· What does ELIZA NOT “say” that a human WOULD say?
Now, consider those questions as well as what you freewrote at the start of class, and freewrite an answer to this:
If I had not told you that ELIZA was a bot, would you have known from the conversation? How?
Quote from your conversation with ELIZA for support.
The Turing Tragedy
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Howj6QXmDMs
Turn In To Milk Crate.