Homework 1

Considering the application of the Turing Test?


Due: Wednesday, August 29th, 11:00 PM


Read the following on-line chapter from Raymond Kurzweil's The Age of Intelligent Machines. This chapter, entitled "A (Kind of) Turing Test", describes something of a "partial Turing Test" in the domain of poetry.

As defined by Turing, the imitation game allows an unlimited range of questioning. Writing a program to pass such a "total" Turing Test is far beyond our current capabilities. But we could limit the test to a specific domain of questioning, say, questions we'd ask a doctor about medicine, questions we'd ask a composer about music, or small talk about the latest White House scandal.

Kurzweil describes an even more limited test, in which humans try to determine whether a stanza of poetry was written by a computer or a human poet.

Write short essays in response to each of the following:

Submit your answers in hardcopy by the due date and time.

 

BTW, if you are interested in playing with Kurzweil's "Cybernetic Poet" you can download a free copy from his website.  So far, I haven't done so, so I make no promises or endorsements.