Random Research: The Loebner Prize

Subtitle of this post: Sharing The Only Worthwhile Thing I Learnt in Philosophy As a Celebration of Never Having to Do It Again.

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So, today was the day of the first of the end-of-year exams for my first year in university. Incidentally, this first exam was also the last philosophy exam I will ever have to take, mostly because I'm a science student and my curiosity in arts has been KO'd with this one-unit (course for you Americans [and Brits? I have no idea] out there) venture, but also because I have discovered that studying philosophy sucks. I like thinking and I like telling people what I think and how I think and why I think how I think, but studying and trying to explain what dusty old men might perhaps think in difficult, entirely hypothetical terms just doesn't do it for me. Science can be hard, but at least it limits itself to this world in entirely testable terms instead of some hypothetical universe where you should be prepared for any amount of hypothetically crazy shit happening. To summarise my experience with philosophy:

Just as a side-note, I don't mean disrespect for anyone who studies or enjoys philosophy. If you're doing it, getting it and enjoying it, you're probably cleverer than me anyway, and thus deserve my resentment.

The one thing that I did like about the course that I was studying were the topics we were studying: we studied the possibility of time-travel, whether machines can think or not and such sci-fi topics. A particular favourite of mine was this possibility of machines thinking, and I'd like to share a tidbit of it with you.

You see, in 1950, a guy called Alan Turing declared (by publishing a paper) that he thought that asking "can machines think?" is too much of an ambiguous question. In his opinion, if we were ever to reach clarity on this question, we would be better off with formulating some sort of way to test the ability to think instead of just postulating about it abstractly. The ability to test for thought relies on a functionalist principle, which assumes that the ability to think doesn't rely on having a brain similar to that of a human being; further, that thinking is simply information processing. I'm not entirely sure how persuasive or true these assumptions are -- like I said, this unit didn't really set me on fire (if that even is a valid metaphor) -- but the fact that I resent the general human attitude that we're so much more special than everything else makes me inclined to agree.

In that 1950 paper, Computing Machinery and Intelligence, Turing proposed such a test. In this test, a judge would have a written discussion with one machine and one human being without indication of which was which. Both participants would attempt to convince the judge that they are the human being. Then, after a 5-minute discussion, the judge would decide which of the participants is a human being: and if the computer manages to fool the judge over 50% of the time (in which case it is indistinguishable from the human being), it can be said to have passed the Turing test.

It sounds mighty interesting, doesn't it? If you're like me, you'd give anything to be a fly on the wall during such a discussion. The wonderful thing is that we can.

The Loebner prize is an annual competition that, as I understand, accepts applications from anyone and everyone who wants to build a program that can behave like a human and answer any possible questions from a human in an intelligible manner. As I understand it, no computer has "passed" the Turing test as of yet, per se, but there is a cash prize involved every year for the program with the highest overall rank. I don't have the slightest understanding about programming, but if you're interested in seeing what it takes, click here.

For me, the fascination is in looking over the competition transcripts. My personal favourite is "Do-Much-More", with this fabulous quote:

Judge-3:	What do you do when you're not doing the Loebner prize?
Do-Much-More:	Oh, I do much more than I intended to do at first. I got more interested in the job as I went along.
Judge-3:	Is that difficult?
Do-Much-More:	No, it isn't at all difficult. It is as peaceful as a platypus playing with a potato pudding.

Of course, I also immensely enjoy chatting to Cleverbot. If you haven't tried it yet, be sure to -- it's a whole lot of fun, even if you have to make a little bit of an effort to keep a coherent discussion going. If you've become fascinated by chatbots, go to the Loebner prize home page, as I'll list in my sources in just a moment -- you can find past transcripts and other interesting stuff there.

Hope you enjoy yourself in the wonderful world of AI.

Sources
http://www.worldsbestchatbot.com (quote found here)
http://www.turing.org.uk/turing/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loebner_Prize
http://cleverbot.com/
http://www.loebner.net/Prizef/loebner-prize.html

Additional, technical endnote: This post is riddled with links. Unfortunately, (I think) due to my theme, they don't like to show up in a different font unless you actually mouse over them (this has been the case with a few of my posts. I'm afraid you've missed out on a whole lot of awesome links -- mostly to wikipedia). I am hopeless at figuring such things out, and a brief search of my options didn't help me much. If you know how to make links visible without having to change my theme, please shoot me a comment and let me know.

Random Research: Caffeine

Today was my first second (I can even procrastinate finishing blogposts!) day of study for exams. It was the first second of many, many days, leading up to the 16th of November, the day of my last exam. Between now and then, I will hardly have a day's rest, not only because of exams and cramming (as outlined a few posts previously), but also because November is already knocking on my door, and my NaNoWriMo novel is SO not ready to be written yet! I mean, I don't even have character names yet! I now have names for my most important characters, but the whole project is still more of a plothole than anything.

You guys know what this means, right? It means that, in order to keep my head above the water, I'm going to need LOTS AND LOTS OF CAFFEINE. Everyone who's ever done NaNoWriMo (or gone to university in general, I'm guessing) is very, very familiar with this solution. That, and sugar, but I'd like to focus on caffeine for now. And because for some reason, I seem to get the best ideas when I'm supposed to be doing something else, like studying for my philosophy exam -- actually, specifically when studying for my philosophy exam, because I'd rather be doing about a gazillion things than studying for it -- I decided that it was finally time to satisfy my curiosity about caffeine. And then, figuring that you guys are probably either also nerds or geeks and/or doing NaNo and/or going to university, I thought I'd share.

 Caffeine, or, between friends, 3,7-dihydro-1,3,4-trimethyl-1Hpurine-2,6-dione, is a psychoactive drug, meaning that it mainly affects your central nervous system and through that, your brain, altering your behaviour and state of mind. Apart from that ridiculously long IUPAC name, doesn't sound like a whole lot of new information, does it? The interesting bit of information follows: apparently, caffeine is able to do this to our brains, because it is very similar to a chemical that is already present in our bodies: adenosine.

Adenosine accumulates in your brain after long periods of concentration or alertness, and that is interpreted in our brain as a signal to rest or sleep in order to give your poor, hard-worked neurons some time to relax. But no, that really important thing is on tomorrow, you can't afford to lose any time on pesky rest right now! So you go and make yourself a biiiiig cup of coffee, the caffeine molecules swimming around in your cup, and, before long, in your brain, blocking the receptors that usually detect adenosine, keeping you alert and focused for juuust a little bit longer.

Sounds like a pretty sweet deal, doesn't it? Fortunately, too, caffeine doesn't appear to have that many adverse side-effects: though it is claimed to be a diuretic, thereby leading to dehydration, the generally accepted view is that this is not true, and that any such effect caused by caffeine is similar to that of water. Previously, it had also been thought to increase blood pressure, but recent studies have shown no such connection. There's a whole list of risks and benefits of caffeine listed on wikipedia, if you're interested -- I only glanced at the list, but I didn't see anything there that was blatantly contradicted by the rest of my research; still, take it with a grain of salt. I guess the fact that it appears relatively harmless makes sense: I wouldn't think that anything ultimately harmful to humans could be used as widely as caffeine is, what with the knowledge we have of biochemistry today.

So, the only thing you really have to worry about in your reckless coffee consumption is addiction. Like any other drug, caffeine is addictive, and, when used extensively will eventually cause withdrawal symptoms like headaches, muscle pain, irritation, and so on and so forth. One site I visited also claimed that caffeine consumption can turn into a vicious cycle: though its effects diminish over time, as with alcohol, there will be a measure left in your body, and that might disrupt your deep sleep pattern, leading to restless sleep, which, then, leads to more excessive caffeine intake.

That's all I've got for now, folks! Hope none of you get caught in the vicious caffeine cycle in the vicious month that is called November (I know I'm about six days off the start of November, but it's appropriate, ok?); and if you are, well, at least it's delicious, delicious coffee, right?

Sources:
http://www.overcaffeinated.org/
http://www.rsc.org/chemistryworld/podcast/CIIEcompounds/transcripts/caffeine.asp?playpodcastlinkuri=%2Fchemistryworld%2Fpodcast%2FCIIEcompound.asp%3Fcompound%3DCaffeine
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caffeine
I also mercilessly stole the pictures off google images. If you own any of these images and would like them removed, please notify me in a comment, and I will take them down.