Symposium: Revisiting Turing and his Test

AISB/IACAP 2012 Symposium

"Revisiting Turing and his Test:

Comprehensiveness, Qualia, and the Real World"

Symposium no. 7 at AISB/IA-CAP 2012 World Congress, Birmingham

4-5 July 2012


ORGANIZERS

Vincent C. Müller (Anatolia College/ACT & University of Oxford)

Aladdin Ayesh (De Montfort University)

With the support of: Mark Bishop (Goldsmith College, London), John Barnden (University of Birmingham), Alessio Plebe (University Messina) and Pietro Perconti (University Messina)

PAPERS

The 11 papers accepted for this volume are available in the proceedings volume for download. See the schedule below or the table of contents.

SCHEDULE

WED 14-16:30

  1. [14:00 - 14:30] Daniel Devatman Hromada
     From Taxonomy of Turing Test-Consistent Scenarios Towards Attribution of Legal Status to Meta-modular Artificial Autonomous Agents
  2. [14:30 - 15:00] Michael Zillich
     My Robot is Smarter than Your Robot: On the Need for a Total Turing Test for Robots
  3. [15:00 - 15:30] Adam Linson, Chris Dobbyn and Robin Laney
    Interactive Intelligence: Behaviour-­based AI, Musical HCI and the Turing Test
  4. [15:30 - 16:00] Javier Insa, Jose Hernandez-Orallo, Sergio España, David Dowe and M.Victoria Hernandez-Lloreda
    The anYnt Project Intelligence Test (Demo)
  5. [16:00 - 16:30] Jose Hernandez-Orallo, Javier Insa, David Dowe and Bill Hibbard
     Turing Machines and Recursive Turing Tests

- Coffee Break -

WED 17-18:30

  1. [17:00 - 17:30] Francesco Bianchini and Domenica Bruni
     What Language for Turing Test in the Age of Qualia?
  2. [17:30 - 18:00] Paul Schweizer
    Could There be a Turing Test for Qualia?
  3. [18:00 - 18:30] Antonio Chella and Riccardo Manzotti
    Jazz and Machine Consciousness: Towards a New Turing Test  

THURS 10-12:30

  1. [10:00 - 10:30] William York and Jerry Swan
    Taking Turing Seriously (But Not Literally)
  2. [10:30 - 11:00] Hajo Greif
     Laws of Form and the Force of Function: Variations on the Turing Test
  3. [11:00 - 12:30] Panel Discussion with speakers and organisers

The overall schedule of the AISB/AI-CAP meeting is on http://events.cs.bham.ac.uk/turing12/schedule.php

 

MOTIVATION

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.

CALL FOR PAPERS

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

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 one of the symposium chairs to agree on details and deadlines.

PROGRAM COMMITTEE

Raul Arrabales (Carlos III University of Madrid)

Antonio Chella (University of Palermo)

Giuseppe Trautteur (University of Napoli Federico II)

Rafal Rzepka (Hokkaido University)

... and the organisers above


[last updated: 7.7.12, VCM]