Turing Twists

The Turing Test was introduced by Alan M. Turing (1912-1954) as "the imitation game" in his 1950 article (now available online) Computing Machinery and Intelligence (Mind, Vol. 59, No. 236, pp. 433-460) which he so boldly began by the following sentence:

I propose to consider the question "Can machines think?" This should begin with definitions of the meaning of the terms "machine" and "think."

Turing Test is meant to determine if a computer program has intelligence. Quoting Turing, the original imitation game can be described as follows:

The new form of the problem can be described in terms of a game which we call the "imitation game." It is played with three people, a man (A), a woman (B), and an interrogator (C) who may be of either sex. The interrogator stays in a room apart from the other two. The object of the game for the interrogator is to determine which of the other two is the man and which is the woman. He knows them by labels X and Y, and at the end of the game he says either "X is A and Y is B" or "X is B and Y is A." The interrogator is allowed to put questions to A and B.

When talking about the Turing Test today what is generally understood is the following: The interrogator is connected to one person and one machine via a terminal, therefore can't see her counterparts. Her task is to find out which of the two candidates is the machine, and which is the human only by asking them questions. If the machine can "fool" the interrogator, it is intelligent.

This test has been subject to different kinds of criticism and has been at the heart of many discussions in AI, philosophy and cognitive science for the past 50 years. See the Turing Test for more information.

Below, a new Turing Test is discussed.

N: You recall my interest in programming a sex bot for you. It's interesting because it's kind of a way to live vicariously through it. add telepresence. add neuro-haptic interfaces.

A: That would be fun. It would also break down sexuality boundaries. Picture the scene - a man is fucking his female-designed robot only to find that a man has been *behind* her all along.

N: Yup. hehe. It would be so much fun to pop that on unsuspecting strangers, and see how they react.

A: Candid Camera? Through the eyes of the bot maybe? *L*

Is it the shape of the genitals or the gender identity which counts? In this case it is the latter, as it is the telepresent man who was doing the fucking. The robot was just a tool. The two guys were still mentally fucking, so it was a homosexual act. Would it be a homosexual act if a man plugged another man into a sex-toy & showed him pictures of women (that he, the shower, chose) until he came? If you having sex with a man who lives & identifies himself as a woman, then you are still by definition heterosexual? But in this case there is no third-party robot...

N: /me's heads explode. =D

A: *L*

The absurdity of sexuality pigeonholes (excuse the phrase) is revealed. Sexuality dissolves/fragments as third parties become involved. Its like sex with another man and a woman. If the guys are just fucking her & not paying much attention to each other, are they still having sex with each other? How much is the vaginal membrane really separating their erections? They can still feel each other for sure. Or are they having sex with the same woman coincidentally? Now multiply the scene with other people or people telepresent via robots or convincing transvestites.... Evidently, sexuality is built around monogamous & clearly defined genital interaction and gender identification. It is not just what you see that defines who you are having sex with, but what the other person thinks about themselves. That said I imagine that most people would still claim male/female genital interaction is still heterosexual, even if the woman acts & lives (& fucks) like a man, that she is masculine, that her *gender* is male, she was raised & has always lived that way. But how different is that from the first telepresence example? The only difference is the physical separation of gender identity from genital sex in the case of the telepresent man. In the example of the masculine woman, she is both in one body.

A new Turing Test springs to mind..... You have sex with two bots. One is a telepresent human, another is a telepresent computer. Later, when we have more convincing synthetic bodies, telepresence isn’t necessary. But by then, I expect this test to be moot.

N: lol - good one! I continue to see applications for human-equivalent AI, since telepresence will likely be able to step in before sufficiently sophisticated software. call it advanced puppetry. It might be a tight race, though.

The things that are holding up advancement used to be technical. today, they're economic. tomorrow, they will be political. after that, they'll be social.

A: Imagine what telepresent bodies could do with each other...? A throw away lover could be a big thing in extreme-sex circles. Imagine killing & being killed.

N: hm. telepresent deathmatch quake in meatspace! mmm - probably wouldn't work, what with all the teleportation going on. As realistic as modern 3D shooters want to be, realism makes a horrible game, commercially speaking.

N: Telepresence, of course, would add a largely unanticipated spin on sex bots. If you can hook an artificial intelligence into a robot, you can hook a human intelligence into it, too. this might cushion the shock a bit, as while AI minds might be touchy, modular bodies and telepresence wouldn't be so controversial.

A: Hell. I might end up sleeping with you without ever having to get anybody across the pond! :-)

N: Well, it would beat so-called cyber-sex!

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