AISB/IACAP 2012 Symposium

"Revisiting Turing and his Test:

Comprehensiveness, Qualia, and the Real World"

Symposium no. 7 at AISB/IACAP 2012 World Congress

Birmingham, UK
July 2nd to 6th, 2012

2010 marked the 60th anniversary of the publication of Turing’s paper, in which he outlined his test for machine intelligence. Turing suggested that consideration of genuine machine thought should be replaced by use of a simple behaviour-based process in which a human interrogator converses blindly with a machine and another human. Although the precise nature of the test has been debated, the standard interpretation is that if, after five minutes interaction, the interrogator cannot reliably tell which respondent is the human and which the machine then the machine can be qualified as a 'thinking machine'. Through the years, this test has become synonymous as 'the benchmark' for Artificial Intelligence in popular culture.

There is both widespread dissatisfaction with the 'Turing test' and widespread need for intelligence testing that would allow to direct AI research towards general intelligent systems and to measure success. There is a host of testbeds and specific benchmarks in AI, but there is no agreement on what a general test should even look like. However, this test seems exceedingly useful for the direction of research and funding. A crucial feature of the desired intelligence is to act successfully in an environment that cannot be fully predicted at design time, i.e. to produce systems that behave robustly in a complex changing environment - rather than in virtual or controlled environments. The more complex and changing the environment, however, the harder it becomes to produce tests that allow any kind of benchmarking. Intelligence testing is thus an area where philosophical analysis of the fundamental concepts can be useful for cutting edge research.

There has been recently a growing interest in simulating and testing in machines not just intelligence, but also other mental human phenomena, like qualia. The challenge is twofold: the creation of conscious artificial systems, and the understanding of what human consciousness is, and how it might arise. The appeal of the Turing Test is that it handles an abstract inner process and renders it an observable behavior, in this way, in principle, it allows us to establish a criteria with which we can evaluate technological artifacts on the same level as humans.

New advances in cognitive sciences and consciousness studies suggest it may be useful to revisit this test, which has been done through number of symposiums and competitions. However, a consolidated effort has been attempted in 2010 and in 2011 at AISB Conventions through TCIT symposiums. However, this year’s symposium forms the consolidated effort of a larger group of researchers in the field of machine intelligence to revisit, debate, and reformulate (if possible) the Turing test into a comprehensive intelligence test that may more usefully be employed to evaluate 'machine intelligence' at during the 21st century.

SUBMISSIONS

The symposium organizers would like to invite submissions in any suitable format covering all aspects of machine intelligence from philosophical and practical perspectives.

This includes but not limited to:

• Ways for testing intelligence and consciousness in machines inspired by the Turing test
• Use of modern technologies to provide environments and testbeds for intelligence testing, e.g. virtual reality and game technologies, inspired by the Turing test.
• Theoretical grounds for proving qualia/intelligence in machines
• What does it mean for a machine to have intelligence or qualia?
• Practical tests and tests reports

DEADLINES

***Deadlines Extended***

Submission deadline for all formats: 8 April 2012

Acceptance/rejection notifications: 9 May 2012

Camera-ready copies: 1 June 2012

AISB/IACAP World Congress: 2 - 6 July 2012

Submission is through easychair web site:

https://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=cqrw2012

Please note the AISB style guide

FORMATS

Papers

Full research papers: up to 10 pages

Short Position papers: up to 4 pages

Demos

Posters: a single sheet, preferably A1 or A2 size.

System Demonstrations: descriptive A4 sheet and software.

Competitions

Competition proposal: up to 2 pages, this should go beyond an extended abstract and specify the competition goals and give its operational details so it could be run if funding is awarded.

Competition performance, evaluation, or personal reflection reports: up to 2 pages.

Running a competition for demonstration: Please contact the symposium chair (Aladdin Ayesh: aayesh@dmu.ac.uk) to agree on details and deadlines.