UK Technological Progress!

No joke. I honestly didn't expect to live long enough to see this!

A UK computer has passed the Turing test by convincing 1/3 of a panel of human judges that they were communicating with a real human. The computer posed as a 13 year-old boy.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/2361220/computer-said-to-pass-turing-test-by-posing-as -a-teenager.html

So how long will we have to wait before those clever Brits give the world a convincing spanking bot?

But why? Never mind, I know the answer - it's because they can.

This is disturbing and is a good reason to stay out of chat rooms (not that I plan to). Soon, we will have to try to figure out, not only who the phonies are, but the phony phonies as well.

One never knows who they're talking with. Good way to end up in prison. Pretty clever though. Anyone who reads that article and doesn't pay attention to it is only asking for trouble.

I hear rumours that a program called 'Natasha' is already in use for phone-sex chatlines - it can handle thousands of phone calls simultaneously...

it was a chatbot not a computer

It may be worth mentioning that Kia has a story touching on the topic in an original way: "Testing Turing".

Not to in any way diminish the scientific achievements reached in the UK, for some reason this topic immediately brought to my mind the routine in one of the Beatles movies ("Help", I believe) having to do with British plugs.

I have little experience with those huge antique-looking British plugs, but in my younger years I did have more than a casual acquaintance with the horrible Lucas electrics on British motorcycles. In those days, before Deming and the Japanese gave the world incentive to improve product quality, Triumph and BSA used to manufacture bikes year after year with exactly the same inoperative parts! (Of course, on our side of the pond Harley Davidson was nothing to brag about.)