Week 1 - article 2 Flashcards
the central question in this article
whether machines can think
“imitation game” as a way to explore the question of whether machines can think
- How does it work?
The Imitation Game: This is a game played with three people:
a man (A)
a woman (B)
an interrogator (C).
The interrogator’s job is to figure out which one is the man and which one is the woman, based on their answers to the interrogator’s questions.
Imitation game
- Goals of players A, B, C
The man’s goal (player A): to trick the interrogator into making the wrong identification.
The woman’s goal (player B): to assist the interrogator in making the correct identification.
The interrogator’s goal (player C): to figure out which one is the man and which one is the woman, based on their answers to the interrogator’s questions.
The imitation game
- Communication set-up
The interrogator stays in a separate room and communicates with A and B through written questions and answers. The idea is to prevent the interrogator from relying on voice tones for clues.
The imitation game
- role of the machine in the gane
Turing introduces the idea of:
replacing the man (player A) with a machine.
The question is whether the interrogator will be able to correctly identify the machine as often as they would a human
-> whether the machine can successfully imitate human responses.
The imitation game
- the new question
the ultimate question Turing is posing is whether a machine can mimic human behavior to the extent that an interrogator can’t reliably tell the difference between a machine and a human based on their responses. This is Turing’s way of reframing the broader question of whether machines can think.
Store
The store is a store of information, and corresponds to the human computer’s paper, whether this is the paper on which he does his calculations or that on which his book of rules is printed. In so far as the human computer does calculations in his head a part of the store will correspond to his memory.
Executive unit
The executive unit is the part which carries out the various individual operations involved in a calculation. What these individual operations are will vary from machine to machine. Usually fairly lengthy operations can be done such as ‘Multiply 3540675445 by 7076345687’ but in some machines only very simple ones such as ‘Write down 0’ are possible.
Control
It is the duty of the control to see that these instructions are obeyed correctly and in the right order. The control is so constructed that this necessarily happens.
table of instructions
The human computer is supposed to be following fixed rules; he has no authority to deviate from them in any detail. We may suppose that these rules are supplied in a book, which is altered whenever he is put on to a new job. We have mentioned that the ‘book of rules’ supplied to the computer is replaced in the machine by a part of the store. It is then called the ‘table of instructions’.
Programming
Construction of instruction tabels
Construction of instruction tables
Constructing instruction tables refers to the process of creating a set of rules or guidelines that direct a machine’s behavior
Example:
IF the current temperature is below the set value, THEN turn on the heating; OTHERWISE, turn it off.
digital computer with a random element
a type of computer that includes instructions with an element of chance, like rolling a die, and people might sometimes say it has “free will,” though this term may not be the best choice. The interesting part is that just by looking at the computer’s actions, it’s usually hard to tell if it’s genuinely random or if it’s using a clever trick, like basing decisions on the digits of the number π (pi).
