an introduction to turing
Boy Meets Living Statue, taken in Rome, Italy in the summer of 2010
The Turing Test is supposedly a measure of a machine’s ability to exhibit intelligent behavior. The breakdown: if a human holds a conversation with a hidden machine and is unable to distinguish it from a conversation with a hidden human, the machine has passed the test. Really, the test just looks for imitation, for a mechanical version of human response. If a human teases out the math in behavior, calculates the input and output, conjures the code and wires it in, the machine will pass. That’s the catch – the Turing Test is also a measure of a human’s ability to break down intelligent behavior into the simplest of patterns, the ones easiest to write down and offer forth.
A machine has yet to pass the test. (A human has yet to code a machine that will pass the test.)
The opposite of a Turing Test, I suppose, would judge a human’s ability to exhibit machine-like behavior – the ability to run on a set path, conform to an algorithmic lifestyle, to buzz and hum along in predictable ways and perform endless iterations. I often believe we’ve passed that test already.
The ground between the two is where the issue grows foggy, more difficult to work into letter-strings and digits – the times when machines or objects seem to sprout personalities and memory, become animate or intimate, seemingly spontaneous in a uniquely sentient manner; the times when humans recall their consciousness, or venture to control it, fall out of form, question the code/coding/coder. These are the times when I think of the Turing Test and its version of ‘human’, wonder whether we’re aiming for the code or for the consciousness; wonder which one has to be pierced first to reach the other.
