Turing Test passed as early as this fall?
AI experts at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have been building a knowledge base for a character that they will use to try to pass the Turing Test this fall.
“This synthetic person based on our mathematical theory will carry on a conversation about himself, including his own mental states and the mental states of others,” said Bringsjord. “Our artificial intelligence algorithm is now making this possible, but we need a supercomputer to get real-time performance.”
They will be using IBM’s Blue Gene, and they call the software “Rascals,” for Rensselaer Advanced Synthetic Architecture for Living Systems.
Bringsjord’s research group recently passed a milestone by programming a synthetic character to understand a “false belief.” For instance, to create a false belief you could hide a stuffed bear in a cabinet in front of a child and an adult, and then when the adult leaves the room, move the bear to a closet while the child is still watching. Here, the child should know that the adult now has a false belief–that the bear is still in the cabinet.
Unfortunately, children less than four years old don’t typically conceptualize the beliefs of others, but only their own, and, thus, expect the adult to know that the bear has been moved. Somewhere around five years of age, however, children begin to have second-order beliefs–that is, beliefs about the beliefs of others, enabling them to understand that other people can have beliefs different from their own. Now, Bringsjord’s research group claims to have achieved second- and third-order beliefs in their synthetic characters.
“Children below about four years old don’t have second-order beliefs–they just have first-order beliefs. But we have a mathematical account that passes the test,” said Bringsjord. “We have a formal theory of second- and third-order beliefs, and a way to make them computationally real.”
The researchers are supported by IBM. As is Blue Brain. IBM does some cool stuff. I do not think it is a bad investment to go long IBM.
