In reply to tfb.

> Turing had a lot of clever ideas: the Turing test was not one of them.

Comrades, have we performed a power analysis of who The Man was and where Turing was in relation to the power of The Man? (I jest, but it helps frame what I take away from The Imitation Game.)

He writes about machine minds and introduces the concept in a way that's aged badly, but it's interesting to me to think about what else was going on for this gay man. He's having to hide any love or lust (things that have inspired so much human 'isn't it great to be in love?' art) and risk losing his community of fellow smart problem-solvers if he lost his clearance to access state secrets, and he comes out with a way to raise the question for the thinking machines that must echo his daily life: 'what do I need to do so the powers that be will treat me like a person?'

K3n.

The uncorrected typo is a nice touch of realism.

Development of the dead tree version is well underway:

(By a maker who produces other items adjacent to your needs:

)

In reply to Steven G. Harms.

As an English person who has some experience with people from southern US states, let me just say that on the day when any American works out that we're ripping the piss out of you will ... be a day that never comes.  If you just assume that any English[*] person you meet is laughing at your expense you'd not be far wrong.

[*] Yes: Scotland has different rules, Wales likely does as well.

In reply to Serno.

Imagine skipping straight to Nobel disease without getting the Novel first. Being a "thought leader" must be a hell of a drug.

In reply to tfb.

I see now. I was looking at a 1947 paper about men (and machines) playing chess, not the 1950 paper. Yeah, that's some pointless gendering.

In reply to jwz.

In 2025, a synthetic text extrusion machine passed the test more reliably than humans did.

Somehow it atill escapes the giant brains of the AI bros that this result is saying in 200pt super-bold blinking red text that the Turing test is not worth even the cheapest paper it could ever be printed on.

Turing had a lot of clever ideas: the Turing test was not one of them.

In reply to Cabbage.

Yes, it was.  The test was could you tell a man from a woman pretending to be a man (or the other way around, I forget).

In reply to jwz.

Was it specifically gendered, or does it just use words like "man" and "he" because they were the default at the time? I'm not defending the linguistic practices of mid-cenrury men, but the gendering is accidental and peripheral, rather than an integral aspect as the result of a conscious choice.

In reply to jwz.

Dawkins would probably approve.

In reply to tfb.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_disease

I mean, he's not a Nobelist but seems to suffer from similar symptoms

In reply to tfb.

I mean the actual Turing test was specifically gendered so this is all even more stupid and sexist than anyone realizes.

In reply to Secret Fox.

Richard Dawkins will one day be one of the examples used in textbooks in the section where they explain why the Turing test is junk.

That’s pretty cool.  I’m reminded of my .bashrc file, wherein every single four letter permutation of the letters ‘m’, ‘a’, ‘k’, and ‘e’ are aliased to ‘make’

A thing of beauty is a joy forever...

lol as someone from the south I can tell you this was wholly unneeded. We got you, cousin.

Be careful; Richard Dawkins might decide that music box is sentient

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qKs_-uN6SSQ