What is the relationship between language and consciousness? If a computer can use language as humans do, is it then sentient, capable of independent thought? What would be the ramifications of truly "intelligent" computers? How far are we from this goal now? Every year, programmers compete in the Loebner contest, which judges programs according to "the Turing Test": can the computer trick humans into believing it's human?

READING:

The History of AI (outline).

"Turing Test, etc." by Peter Seibel.

"How to pass the Turing test by cheating" by Jason L. Hutchens. (Be sure to look at the example interactions with ELIZA, PARRY, etc.)




OPTIONAL:

• Talk directly to Hutchens' MegaHAL 5! (Updated link.) And try his newer "personality," HeX.
• HAL transcripts (from both 2001 and 2010)
• Grant Castillou's Introduction to AI Heaven.
• K. Eric Dressler's chapter on Thinking Machines in his Engines of Creation.
• AI in Space
• "Human-Computer Interaction Overview" by Ed Hilpert of IBM.
• Holley E. Lange's "Speech synthesis and speech recognition: Tomorrow's human-computer interfaces?"
• Artificial Life Online
• Andrew Hodges' Alan Turing Page
• Austin's own Robot Group, promoting "the integration of advanced technology with the arts."
• An essay by Greg Garvey about the Automatic Confession Machine.
• Visit the CHOMSKYBOT, a wonderful little program that spews out meaningless paragraphs that sound very much like Noam Chomsky's writings on linguistics. (Reload the page a couple of times to get the full effect.)
• Anna Eklund's list of famous computers, robots, androids, etc. from SF

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