Famed polymath Alan Turing is perhaps best known for his role in cracking the German military’s Enigma crypto system. Turing thereby—at the very least—shortened the war against the Nazis and saved many lives. He also established several of the foundational theorems of computer science. As for the topic at hand, Turing speculated, way back in 1950, even as he was inventing digital computers, about the possibility of an artificial intelligence.
Given how experts struggled—and continue to do so—to define intelligence, Turing’s insight was characteristically brilliant. He proposed: don’t try to define artificial intelligence; rather, describe its behavior. From that concept arose (what Turing himself never called) the Turing test. Simplifying a bit—and this is the common understanding: an entity that successfully masquerades as a human is intelligent.
More specifically, while speculating about “Can a computer think?” Turing envisioned the following blind experiment. Human judges would interact, using only text messages, with unseen humans and computers. The seemingly intractable question “Can a computer think?” thus morphed into: can a computer program convince at least one-third of its human judges for five minutes that it, too, is a human? From the perspective of the engineer developing an AI (and in Turing’s own perspective), a program meeting that standard has won an “imitation game.”1
Until 2014, no program had ever won.
What happened in the annual Turing trials of 2014? At one level, nothing new: just another chatbot. (That’s a program designed to simulate human conversation.) But at another level, and what led to so many breathless headlines: this chatbot fooled one-third of its judges.
The much-heralded chatbot presented itself as Eugene Goostman, a thirteen-year-old Ukrainian for whom English was not his native language. This artfully chosen persona served to justify “Eugene’s” misunderstandings, awkward phrasings, and follow-up questions. The program’s “success,” rather than a proof of artificial intelligence, demonstrates natural cunning in human programmers and natural gullibility in one of the trial’s three judges.
To be sure, the Turing test isn’t, despite its considerable popular cachet, the final word in how to confirm (if/when this happens) the arrival of artificial intelligence. A recent, improved criterion would be the ability to correctly interpret Winograd schemas (first suggested by computer scientist Terry Winograd). This more nuanced assessment exploits purposefully ambiguous natural-language statements that are readily resolvable with a modicum of (a human’s version of) common sense. Here is a simple Winograd schema: “The trophy doesn’t fit in the brown suitcase because it is too big. What is too big?”
Perhaps Winograd schemas can’t be gamed as readily as the Turing test, but both assessments share a limitation. By either method, any entity that isn’t conversant in human culture, affairs, language, environments, artifacts, and modes of interaction with the physical world begins at a serious disadvantage. As a character in my AI novel, Fools’ Experiments (2008), put it:“What kind of criterion was that? Human languages were morasses of homonyms and synonyms, dialects and slang, moods and cases and irregular verbs. Human language shifted over time, often for no better reason than that people could not be bothered to enunciate. ‘I could care less’ and ‘I couldn’t care less’ somehow meant the same thing. If researchers weren’t so anthropomorphic in their thinking, maybe the world would have AI. Any reasoning creature would take one look at natural language and question human intelligence.”
None of which negates tremendous progress that has been made toward smarter software. In the decades since Alan Turing formulated his imitation game, much has been accomplished. We now have expert systems that, despite their lack of “real world” common sense, apply rules developed by human specialists to focused tasks like stock trading. And a chess-playing program that defeated a world grandmaster. And natural-language processing, like Apple’s Siri, and translation software, like Babelfish and its successors, that are no longer (consistently) laughable. And genetic algorithms that “evolve” from crude approximations to reasonable, if not necessarily optimal, solutions to problems. And robots that navigate complex environments, unaided, such as Google’s self-driving cars. And “machine learning” software that fine-tunes its behavior in response to the successes and failures of its previous actions. And pattern-matching software that can sometimes identify objects, and hypothesize associations among objects, found within images. And fuzzy logic. And neural nets that simulate human neural tissue. And—
With each such achievement, the realization comes, “Oh, that wasn’t a problem of intelligence. We just needed to find the right algorithm.”
Because intelligence, as we humans commonly understand the phenomenon, isn’t about algorithms. Intelligence involves awareness and purposefulness. However appropriately a mechanism might respond to stimuli, we resist considering that something “intelligent” when, left to itself, it merely spins its mental wheels.
How and why do you and I initiate actions? What is free will? What is self-awareness? No one knows. Perhaps volition is an emergent property of a very large ensemble of quantum states. Within physics as it is presently understood, only quantum mechanics offers any basis for non-determinism.
Of course, despite almost a century of effort, physicists still fail to agree what quantum mechanics means. The plurality opinion of a recent survey of experts was: don’t ask. Trust that the math works.2
If intelligence does involve volition and volition is indeed somehow rooted in quantum indeterminism, I don’t find it surprising that intelligence—whether resident in meat or silicon—remains ill-defined.
Suppose that, someday, humanity’s technological toolbox grows to include large-scale quantum computing. Then, perhaps, an entity will arise with a credible possibility of exhibiting intelligence rather than trickery and human mimicry. Won’t that make for an exciting headline?
If nonhuman intelligences—whether alien, artificial, or both—ever exist, let’s hope they have better criteria for recognizing sapient companions than the Turing test.
Footnotes
1 The Imitation Game, a 2014 movie about Turing, isn’t (despite its title) about AI. It’s about cracking the Enigma code.
2“Why quantum mechanics is an ‘embarrassment’ to science,” Brad Plumer, The Washington Post, February 7, 2013, http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonkblog/wp/2013/02/07/quantum-mechanics-is-an-embarrassment/.
© The Author 2017
Michael Brotherton (ed.)Science Fiction by ScientistsScience and Fiction10.1007/978-3-319-41102-6_5
Neural Alchemist
Tedd Roberts1
(1)Kernersville, USA
Movies and TV showed the Zombie Apocalypse as a single event, occurring suddenly due to an uncontrolled infection or some mysterious, mystical event. That couldn’t have been farther from the truth. It started slowly, subtly, and we just chalked it up to our own burgeoning medical and technological advancements: a few less patients died, accident victims recovered, once deadly diseases became less so. The First World was caught up in hubris and we patted ourselves on the back for being successful at cheating Death. No one paid much attention to the fact that it was happening in the rest of the world, too. The howling mobs and ravaging hordes would come later… much later.
***
The office walls were a cool, professional blue designed to send the message that this was an office of authority. The University logo dominated the wall behind the receptionist’s desk. The occupant of that desk did her best to ignore the man sitting in one of the visitor chairs. Her aura of professional detachment was marred by the furtive glances whenever she thought he wasn’t looking.
Somewhere a battery-operated clock ticked loudly in the silence. From an adjacent office could be heard the clicking of keys on a computer.
Professor John Wissen sat waiting.
He has neither comfortable nor uncomfortable. None of that mattered anymore. Nevertheless, he sat.
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Waiting.
As if he had all the time in the world.
Tick.
The telephone ring was jarring in the near silence of the waiting area. Wissen did not react. Alarm or boredom; neither mattered. The receptionist, however, practically leapt out of her ergonomic chair to answer the phone. After a brief “Hello” and a moment of listening, she hung up the phone, turned to the visitor and said: “The Associate Dean will see you now, Professor Wissen. Please, go right in.”
She gestured vaguely in the direction of an interior door, and turned back to her computer screen with a visible sigh of relief when he complied.
***
This office was a distinct contrast to the waiting area, warm beige walls, richly toned wooden furniture, pictures of family members, personal mementoes. The surroundings perfectly suited Associate Dean Laura Diaz. Well-regarded by faculty and administration alike, she had pursued Wissen’s case with the administration.
She stood and came out from behind her desk to greet Wissen, shaking his hand – one of the few to still do so.
“Sit, John.” She gestured to one of a pair of comfortable chairs, taking the other herself.
“Thank, you, Dean.” Wissen said, formally, as he sat. “I appreciate the awkward position this has put you in.”
“Nonsense, John.” She smiled at him, a heartwarming, genuine smile, not like the furtive glances he’d been receiving lately. “Why so formal? You’ve called me Laura since we were graduate students.”
“Sorry, I just figured with recent events you might need to keep some detachment.”
“No, the Board of Trustees specifically asked me to work on this because they know we are such old friends.”
“Oh. Thanks. I do appreciate it, really.” Wissen tried to smile. It wasn’t easy. First he had to identify the facial nerve and send it a signal to contract first the cheek muscles, then mandibular muscles and then the skin around the eyes.
Diaz laughed. “John, if you only knew how silly that looks! You are the only person I know that smiles one muscle at a time.”
“Technically I’m not a person any more, Laura.” Wissen’s face fell back into its habitual, neutral expression.
“Well, about that,” Diaz continued, “The Faculty Executive Council decided on ‘Professor Emeritus’ since they didn’t think that the Board would go for ‘Professor Posthumous’. In fact, the Board agreed, but then they sent the whole thing over to Legal. Once the lawyers work it out, the Board will give final approval.” She paused and took a deep breath. “Sooooo… I just got off the phone with Legal. They’re having to get pretty inventive, given that there’s really no precedent for your situation.”
“But they will allow me to continue working?”
“Oh, yes, that was established first, it’s the reason for the official position. A liability issue, I was told, if you don’t have an official appointment, you can’t be here. Your salary, on the other hand…”
“I suppose that means they can still only pay my estate?”
“No, Legal says we can put it in something like a Living Trust, where life partners put all of their assets into a secured fund, but can spend it at need.”
“So, I get an Unliving Trust?” Wissen asked, just the sides of his mouth pulled up in another attempt at a smile.
“I suppose we could call it that. Your son will still be the trustee and beneficiary, but you will have unlimited rights at the funds. Legal also says we should pay your apartment and bills from it and register your car to the trust. They’ve gotten approval to roll your IRA and 403c retirement funds into it as well.” Diaz paused and frowned. “The insurance company, though, insists that they won’t pay off the life insurance.”
“Screw ‘em. Tell Legal that if they won’t pay Life, then they have to pay Permanent Disability. After all, I did die in a covered automobile accident.” Wissen’s bitter tone belied the blank look on his face.
Diaz laughed. “Actually, Legal told me that they could probably get that. If they don’t go for a lump-sum payment, it could even cost them more than paying out the life insurance.”
Wissen sat in silence for a moment. “But how can Bill administer a trust here? He’s in Japan for the next three years.”
“Ah, well that’s where Legal started getting inventive!” Diaz reached over to her desk and picked up a folded letter. “Here is Bill’s designation of a ‘memorial gift’ to the University. Thanks to his own job and savings, he doesn’t feel he needs the inheritance, at least not now. He has authorized us to draw half of the trust as an endowment under the institution’s control. He included anything of which he was a beneficiary, such as the royalties on your patents and your retirement funds.” She paused. “By the way, what did you do, pour all of Ruth’s estate into your retirement accounts?”
“No, actually, most of it went to Bill. It’s just that I always contributed the maximum legal amount. It adds up.”
“Oh, so that’s what it was. I wish my retirement had done as well. Well, with this and the fact that the University still holds your NIH and DoD grants, the Board had to reconfirm your faculty appointment and give you back your lab.”
“I will so enjoy getting out of the basement.” Wissen tried again to smile, but he wasn’t up to sarcastic yet. The past three months of losing his lab, equipment and students, not to mention car and apartment while living on a cot in one of the antiquated basement labs had worn thin.
“There’s still a catch.” Diaz reminded him.
“Yeah, I know. I’m still dead.”
“Yes, that’s true, but I mean your legal identity. Trust aside, you don’t legally exist: you can’t own property, be paid or enter a contract. The trust will take care of that, but the real issue is identification. You technically can’t drive, even though the DMV won’t press the issue until your license is due in three years. But you have no official status, no ID, no passport, no Social Security number.”
“No Social Security, no taxes, no withholding. That doesn’t sound so bad.”
“No leaving the country, no air travel, no getting stopped by the police, because if you get asked for ID, it comes back as stolen.”
“Oh, not so hot then.”
“There’s one way out, though. If you are right that this is a result of something in the lab, then it’s patentable.”
“WHAT? You can NOT patent a person.”
“Well, technically you’re not a person, and we can patent a cell culture, and you are most definitely a unique cell culture line. Industry Relations has already filed the provisional patent. They just need your notebooks to finalize it.”
“DAMN it, Laura, I am not a cell culture!”
“At least it would give you a legal identity.”
“Sure it does: ‘Property of the University’. Are they going to send Dexter to put a property tag on me? Make me wear it on my forehead, tattoo it on my rump, or just notch my ears like a lab rat?”
“John, it’s the only way.”
“Sure, Laura, I know. This whole situation is hard; I just never imagined that anything could be worse than negotiating a DoD contract, but this certainly looks that way.” He stood up, slowly, and attempted the smile again. “But at least it is something. Thank you Laura.”
She also stood, and took his hands briefly, before turning to the office door. “I know it is hard, John, but just look at where you are. We’ll make this work.”
***
The lecture hall normally seated 125 students; this class had no more than 75 in attendance. Classroom dynamics tempered by medical student politics would ordinary fill up the front two rows and distribute the rest with just a handful of students in the back rows. Today the students were about half in front and half in back. There were only two vacant seats in the back row.
Morbid curiosity or morbid fear? Wissen thought to himself. The bodies in the back row… Okay, that was a morbid thought…, the STUDENTS in the back row, plus the unusual proliferation of extra recording
devices per student probably accounted for the calls the Dean’s office had received demanding that ‘The Abomination’ be removed from the Faculty.
Just outside the lecture hall was a flyer announcing the special lecture. Some wit had defaced it, crossing out Wissen’s name, and replacing it with that of the ghost professor from those young wizard books written a few years back. What was the story? Oh, yes, the old wizard professor had died in mid-lecture and kept on lecturing as a ghost without noticing. Not quite the same, but he supposed there were worse names to be stuck with.
The buzz of voices started to die down. John just sat and waited for his introduction. He was just gratified that students had shown up. There had been a protest piece in the newspaper last week–it was written by the local head of an animal rights group. You’d think that a group that thought a rat, pig, dog and boy were equal could accept someone that was ‘differently vital.’ But no, they seemed to view it as just another version of human encroachment into the ‘pristine realm’ of Gaia. The op-ed even claimed that he was disrupting the biosphere by not allowing his remains to “nurture the microbes of the Mother Earth.”
The course director was a small man that spoke with great big gestures. With a flourish of hands and arms, he finished the introduction and Wissen stepped up to the lectern and cued his ‘wake-up’ slide. “Stem Cells. Can’t live with ‘em, can’t be Undead without ‘em.”
“Stem cells were much maligned in the early part of the century. There was much public outcry over the misconception that stem cells could only come from fetal tissue. People who opposed abortion were afraid that research in stem cells would fuel a need for more tissue, thus encouraging more abortions. Others were afraid of a rash of new cancers or birth defects.” That usually got a few nods. It really hadn’t been so many years since the government had lifted the total ban on stem cell research.
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