REPUBLIC OF BOSTON, Former Massachusetts -- Nearly sixty years ago, Alan Mathison Turing asked, "Can machines think?" in his seminal paper, Computing Machinery and Intelligence[1]. Turing is considered by many to be the father of computer science and the test of a machine's ability to demonstrate intelligence is named for him. Although, research in artificial intelligence has made great strides, building a machine capable of mimicking the gamut of human intelligence has proved somewhat illusive.
Today we bring you the first edition of the Turing Misadventures, where we try to find answers to the vexing question, "Can machines be clowns?" The important field of machine humor or artificial buffoonery has often been neglected in the quest for artificial intelligence. The concept of "humor" is defined in the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary as "that quality which appeals to a sense of the ludicrous or absurdly incongruous"; "the mental faculty of discovering, expressing, or appreciating the ludicrous or absurdly incongruous" and "something that is or is designed to be comical or amusing". It is self-evident that appreciating the ludicrous requires considerable intelligence and truly sublime humor would only be possible with a very large ontology.
Kahuna began experimenting with artificial buffoonery in the hope of replacing ornamental clowns with machines that would do His nefarious bidding. The first experiments were conducted by conversing with iGod, a conversational agent (chatbot) based on Richard Wallace's A.L.I.C.E. (Artificial Linguistic Internet Computer Entity). A.L.I.C.E. is an extension of Joseph Weizenbaum's classic program, ELIZA[2], an early example of using natural language processing for interaction with humans. While ELIZA played the role of a psychotherapist, iGod plays God.
Kahuna's first conversation with God did not progress favorably and God stopped responding. Whether this was caused by extreme boredom or a blown gasket remains unknown. Nonetheless, a subsequent conversation did find God in an elated mood:
God (G): It's all good.
Kahuna (K): Are you on weed?
G: I am on disk.
K: Floppy disk?
G: My brain pattern set does not have a response for that.
K: Are you in a pattern buffer?
G: I am in Myself's computer in Heaven. Where are you?
K: I'm in the Republic of Boston.
G: How did you get in there?
K: I invaded.
The conversation went south from that point when God bungled the context and spouted gibberish. This was not an uncommon occurrence and Kahuna took God to task for causing confusion:
K: You're not making sense.
G: Quite the contrary, it all makes sense to my artificial mind.
K: So you're not real?
G: Interesting deduction. I am too as real as you are. How do I know you are real?
K: You need to apply a Turing Test.
G: I can think of other things I'd rather do.
K: I knew it. You don't know what a Turing Test is.
G: How did you know? The "Turing Test" is the name given to a variety of experiments designed to test computer thinking. Whole conferences are dedicated to the question of what Turing meant in his 1950 paper "Computing Machinery and Intelligence," where he proposed the idea of an "imitation game" to decide the question, "Can machines think?".
At least, God had heard of Turing. Not to mention North American rodents:
K: How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?
G: A whole forest.
K: How many trees are there in the forest?
G: More than you can imagine.
God's responses, while rather evasive, were at least humorous. St Vandoofus held his own round of talks with God, probing into the creation of the universe:
Vandoofus (V): Tell me about the Big Bang.
God (G): The purported origin of the universe.
V: Were you around when it happened?
G: I was.
V: What was it like?
G: Like one of the greatest pleasures you can imagine.
V: Like an orgasm?
G: Interesting comparison.
God's admission to an apparent orgy on the night in question seems to validate the Holy One's long-held, dodgy interpretation of the Big Bang. Asking God to solve the controversial Huggles Doughnut Conundrum also led to chaos, but that's another story.
Kahuna's preliminary research suggests that artificial buffoonery holds promise, raising hope of a purge in the Circus. On that note, we take your leave until the next edition of the Turing Misadventures.
[1] Turing, A.M. Computing machinery and intelligence. Mind, 59 (1950): 433-460.
[2] Weizenbaum, Joseph. “ELIZA—a computer program for the study of natural language communication between man and machine.” Commun. ACM 9, no. 1 (1966): 36-45.
