Dresden Future Forum: Turing Test 2029
Ray Kurzweil has made a 20000 dollar bet that by 2029 a computer will be able to pass a Turing test. (here is the first one I took with a 2003 program) He made this bet of course based on his conclusions of the exponential growth of technology which will by 2029 be so astronomic that we will have reached “the singularity”. Foreseeing as he is maybe he made this bet as well because he knows something about the us-dollars inflation that we don´t. This bet of course raises the question whether or not a human can be successfully replicated just by the mere power of computation, or if Aristotle was right and a human is more than the sum of it´s parts.
A snapshot of the debate: Someone brought up that it would be possible to identify a robot by the fact that he could remember anything. Perfect memory is not a human characteristic, in fact the opposite, meaning that we forget and actually alter our memories, does shapes our character and gives us a feeling of self awareness.
As this was said another participant interfered that by 2029 we will be so advanced in computation, that we will build computers that are actually able to forget. For me this did it, so I asked out aloud why would we want to create robots that are like us then anyway? I know it was a little out of place since the discussion was about how Ray could win his bet, but I wasn´t being cynical or putting out a rhetorical question. I really wanted to hear what these guys thought as I believe it is a basic and thus a very important question. Nobody! answered by the way.
In a very strange way the whole breakout session was reminding me a bit of theanecdote from Heinrich Böll with the fisherman and the tourist. I am sure you all know it. So why would we undergo all this effort when all we came up with in the end was a perfect (meaning that it also has all the human faults) replica of a human, something that´s already there…
Hopefully we´ll always remember that there are ways of “building humans” which are much more fun ;)
…well it is an amazing weather in Berlin so I am off to the DMY now. I´ll chat about my experiences from the symposium on the weekend
