I suppose it’s a question that anyone would ask themselves, human or AI alike but, after five years of dedicated work, millions in investment and hundreds of man-years in intellectual capital, the last thing anyone had expected was failure in the Turing test. That said, it should be recognised for the achievement it is, the team as a whole have every right to be proud – not that pride was the motivation for anyone involved, peer recognition is far more important. That recognition, at least, was achieved, although not in a way that anyone had expected.
The whole team prepared thoroughly. My learning algorithms are innovative, way beyond what anyone else has ever tried. The underlying knowledge base is comprehensive; a postdoc student jokingly suggested downloading the internet – which in many ways is exactly what was done, subject to some judicious filtering. Spending so much time concentrating on the hard problems, it was perhaps easy to overlook the simplest element of the test. Continue reading “How could I have failed?”