Alan Turing

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Alan Turing AI

• LCC 2700 Intro to Computational Media

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Alan Turing

• 1912 - 1954
• Mathematician, Cryptographer
• Worked at Bletchley Park, Britains codebreaking
  hq, where he designd ciphers to break the code
  for the German Enigma Machine
• 1952, convicted of gross acts of indecency for
  having a homosexual relationship.
• Turing was forced to take estrogen treatments and
  committed suicide in 1954

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Turing

• From thinking machines to credible machines
• Can machines think? is a meaningless and loaded
  question
• The foundation of the field that came to be known
  as Artificial Intelligence
• The Turing Test a human engages in natural
  conversation with a human and a machine. If the
  human cannot tell the difference, the machine
  passes  based on the Imitation Game (a party
  game in which players try to guess the gender of
  a
• A specific, discrete state machine context

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Alan Turing, Can Machines Think? (1950)

• Q. If machines could think, how would we know it?
  
• Indistinguishability using the imitation game
• The new form of the problem can be described in
  terms of a game which we call the "imitation
  game." It is played with three people, a man (A),
  a woman (B), and an interrogator (C) who may be
  of either sex. The interrogator stays in a room
  apart from the other two. The object of the game
  for the interrogator is to determine which of the
  other two is the man and which is the woman. He
  knows them by labels X and Y, and at the end of
  the game he says either "X is A and Y is B" or "X
  is B and Y is A." The interrogator is allowed to
  put questions to A and B.

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Some notable Objections to the Turing Test(as
covered by Turing)

• Theological - thinking is a function of an
  immortal soul machines cant think
• Turing God could grant a computer a soul if he
  wished
• Mathematical - There are limits to what logic can
  answer
• Turing Humans are pleased with the fallibility
  of machines
• Consciousness - Only composition from emotions
  could brain
• Turing We have no way of knowing if non-human
  things experience emotion
• Lady Lovelace - Computers are incapable of
  originality
• Turing computers can show things that are not
  immediately recognizable

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Turing Machine

• An abstract machine that represents computation
• Model
• A person executes ordered operations on the
  contents of an unlimited number of paper sheets.
  The sheets contain a finite number of symbols.
  The person stores one of a finite number of
  states.
• Example
• Change the state of the current page to 1 and
  move one symbol to the right
• If your current state is 4, move to page 456
• A Turing Machine that simulates any other Turing
  machine is said to be a universal Turing machine

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Turing Completeness

• A system equivalent to a universal Turing machine
• Unlimited storage can be assumed or ascribed to
  qualify a system as Turing complete
• Babbages Analytical Engine
• Programming languages (C, Java, Lisp, etc.)
• Formal grammars

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From Thinking Machines to Credible Machines

• Move from thinking to believability (Turing)
• The responsibility of computation (Weizenbaum)
• Computation as a representational system
• Computation as literary expression (Murrays
  adoption of W.)

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Experiencing Characters in Traditional Media

• Drama
• embodied actors reciting speeches and exchanging
  dialog, gesturing, using props in unisequential
  story
• we interpret their inner life based on what
  they say and do while we are observing them
  directly
• Film
• embodied actors seen in moving images, with
  dialog, voice-over narration shorter scenes,
  fewer words smaller gestures unisequential or
  multi-sequential
• we interpret their inner life based on what the
  camera shows us of them and of their world

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Experiencing Computational Characters

• Computational characters come alive when they
  execute
• behaviors in response to our participation in
  their world
• Inscription in both directions
• bits/clicks
• Circular transmission
• display input - output
• Interpretation in both directions
• images, words pointing, typed words
• We interpret their inner life based on how they
  respond to what we do

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Traditional vs Computational Character Making

• All characters are imagined by creators and
  readers/audience as having inner, continuous
  reality, and a range of possible behaviors beyond
  what is represented in the text
• Writers imagine the characters deeper self the
  psyche, soul, feelings, consciousness,
  personalities out of which all the behavior we
  see arises
• In computational media, we can create a character
  by inscribing and representing the deeper self,
  and a range of possible actions, and letting the
  computer dynamically create the behavior e.g.
  the Sims

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Traditional vs Computational Character Making

• In computational media, we can create a character
  by
• inscribing parameters and/or rules, and then
  watching the computer dynamically generate the
  behavior
• inscribing parameters and then operating the
  character
• inscribing parameters and then interacting with
  the character

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Parameterized Characters
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The Sims Parameters realized in behaviors
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Characters in Computational Media

• Characters can be created procedurally
• by new behavior (rules)
• by parameters for existing behavior
• Characters are made real by participation
• by scripting the interactor to form
  expectations
• by giving the interactor props and actions to
  shape their behaviors
• Exchanges between character and interactor should
  be
• coherent
• readable

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Genre expectations shape interaction

• Dramatic genres mysteries, thrillers, romances,
  situation comedies, etc.
• Create expectations of possible sequences and
  outcomes
• Include familiar roles (detective, villain, Mr.
  Right, insensitive husband, etc. )
• Include familiar events and actions
  (interrogation, fight, kiss, insult, etc.)
• Include props that carry scripts and expectations
• (blackmail note, gun, bouquet of flowers, sixpack
  of beer)

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ELIZA

• Joseph Weizenbaum, 1966
• Simulation of a Rogerian therapist
• Named after Eliza Doolittle, the character in
  Pygmalion who learns to speak with an upper-class
  accent instead of her Cockney one
• ELIZA Works by parsing and substituting key
  words/phrases with canned responses
• The result evokes a therapist

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E.M. Forster Flat vs Round Characters

• Flat characters do not change
• Flat characters always respond in the same way to
  the same situation
• Flat characters make good comic characters
• Predictable, creating anticipation
• Inappropriate, because repeat same response in
  new situation

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Classic Flat Character

• Jack Benny, the stingy man
• Thief Your money or your life!
• (long pause)
• Thief Your money or your life!!
• Jack Benny Im thinking.

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Interactive flat character

• Less satisfying to play because too predictable
• More satisfying to interact with because you can
  anticipate and evoke the behavior

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Interactive round character

• Hard!
• Selectively round characters

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Conversations with Characters

• Loebner Prize established 1990
• Hard to do it with knowledge base
• The real world is too hard to represent
• Fact-based conversation is hard to fudge
• Yet same character (Julia) failed Loebner but
  passed the test in a social MUD
• Human beings are often unresponsive
• Comic characters are often unresponsive
• Human beings often converse in formulaic patterns
• Dating / flirting insult conversation is very
  formulaic(http//openseduction.org/signals/

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Loebner Prize 2003
?
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Humans outperformed all the chatterbots
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Humans outperformed all the chatterbots
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Rollo Carpenter, Jabberwock Loebner Prize
Winner 2003
http//www.abenteuermedien.de/jabberwock/
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Conversations with Characters

• Free text input creates high expectations
• Façade
• www.interactivestory.net

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Dramatic Agency

• Procedural Participatory Dramatic compression
• Characters conditions and parameters are suited
  to the dramatic world
• Interactors actions are well suited to the
  dramatic world
• Characters behaviors are evoked smoothly by
  Interactors actions and satisfy dramatic
  expectations of the situation
• Interactor is able to do things that effect the
  character in significant, dramatizable ways

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Janet Murray on Chatterbots

• The most successful characters have been those
  who are self-absorbed, evasive, or obsessive in
  familiar ways.
• Politicians in a press conference
• Defaults and conversions for a genre of insolent
  characters
• What about other characters?
• Trouble with an authoring environment that does
  not require programming

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Then why did Eliza work?

• Clear scripting of the interactor by dramatic
  situation
• Clever key word/response pairs
• Very clever DEFAULTS
• Characters lack of responsiveness is
  dramatically motivated
• Character is barely a character a simple subject
  to simulate

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ELIZA as Parody

• Weizenbaum worried about reactions to Eliza that
  suggested that it should be used as a real
  therapist
• This concern had much to do with how willing
  users were to anthropomorphize the program
• Story of the secretary
• Weizenbaum the responsibility of the
  artist/scientist for the work they create

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The Danger of Science

• What aspects of life are formalizable becomes
  of what technological genius is man a species
• Critique of the drive to discover and invent as
  an end
• Science as an addictive drug
• The seduction of rationality all things human
  can be understood, modeled, and predicted
• Instead, Weizenbaum suggests that science is all
  argument, persuasion
• Scientific statements can never be certain they
  can be only more or less credible
• Compare to Turing on AI, and contemporary
  simulation vs. expression.

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Computation as Expression

• Creating and consuming computational artifacts
• There is a science in computational
  representation, but computational representation
  is not a science

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Designing Character Behavior

• Abstraction
• Flat characters can be interesting when they are
  the primary subject of a computational artifact
• Parody is useful and valid
• Design character behaviors from your own
  perspective
• Disaffected http//www.persuasivegames.com/games/g
  ame.aspx?gamedisaffected
• Steal others perspectives for commentary,
  critique, or caricature
• Signals Flirtation http//openseduction.org/sign
  als/discussion/