Go Ask A.L.I.C.E. – Turing Tests, Parlor Games, and Chatterbots

Today I went to Go Ask A.L.I.C.E. : The Inner Workings, with the irresistible tag line instructing me to “Come for the Machines, Stay for the Humans.” ^[1]

It was amazing. They have one more open house and dramatic showing tomorrow (Thurs. Sept. 20) starting at 6:00pm in room 251 in the Harvard Science Center, and you should definitely go.

There were awesome items on display, such as an Teletype machine connected to a chatterbot you could talk to. Turing would be proud. There was also a working Enigma Machine in case you wanted to encode a message or learn how encryption was done during WWII (Cryptonomicon, anyone?).

What really sold me was the dramatic interpretations of human-computer interaction in the form of “Exploratory Vignettes”. Yes, live reenactments of the best-of moments in the Loebner Prize, which presents monetary awards to the most human chatterbot as well as the most human human, in addition to reenactments of dramatic moments in Turing’s life. It was pretty cool, and explored questions such as: What does it mean to act human? What is gender and can a machine mimic being a male or female, or discern gender differences? Does being an awkward computer geek make you act more like a machine, or more human? What is love?

Tags: A.L.I.C.E., AI, ALICE, artificial intelligence, authorship, autonomic computing, autonomous systems, Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments, computer, computing, creativity, Go Ask ALICE, Harvard, Harvard University Science Center, strong AI, Turing, Turing Test, weak AI