#turingyear

So its Alan Turing year and I haven't mentioned the great man on Botology. Well I should because Bots are sometimes measured or assessed by their ability to perform well during a Turing test. Turing testing is highly competitive and has become the focus for many. I greatly admire Turing for suggesting the challenge of making a machine that can fool a human into thinking its human, it has brought us some interesting chatbots into existence and the development of Natural Language Processing, etc. BUT! I'm also disappointed that this can be misguiding too. Bots that pretend to be humans can have a negative impact - it can make people suspicious of bots as being a) spam. b) fraudulent. c)uncanny. and d) upsetting (i.e. read the story about people believing and caring for @trackgirl and then being revealed the truth). The Turing test is not critical of this. A more interesting goal would be to develop bots as being bots, having their own unique behaviours, quirks, shortcomings, and surprises. We need to develop a 'bot culture', and also develop an appreciation of bots; a 'bot aesthetic'. Disguising them as humans will only take us so far. No disrespect to Turing intended, the man was clearly a genius and I've always admired his work and thoughts.