BCSSS

International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics

2nd Edition, as published by Charles François 2004 Presented by the Bertalanffy Center for the Study of Systems Science Vienna for public access.

About

The International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics was first edited and published by the system scientist Charles François in 1997. The online version that is provided here was based on the 2nd edition in 2004. It was uploaded and gifted to the center by ASC president Michael Lissack in 2019; the BCSSS purchased the rights for the re-publication of this volume in 200?. In 2018, the original editor expressed his wish to pass on the stewardship over the maintenance and further development of the encyclopedia to the Bertalanffy Center. In the future, the BCSSS seeks to further develop the encyclopedia by open collaboration within the systems sciences. Until the center has found and been able to implement an adequate technical solution for this, the static website is made accessible for the benefit of public scholarship and education.

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W Y Z

TURING's TEST 1)3)

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The English mathematician A. TURING proposed a test to find out if a given machine can be considered intelligent (1950).

As a synthesis, in the words of P. DENNING: the test is "… an imitation game in which an interrogator asks questions of a human being and a machine; if the interrogator is unable to distinguish between the two, the machine passes the test and is declared intelligent. TURING replaced the question "Can a machine think?" (Title however of his quite more exhaustive 1950 essay – see 1956) with "Can the interrogator distinguish the two in an imitiation game ?" because he considered the former question so imprecise as to be meaningless. His own opinion was that by the year 2000 there would exist machines capable of fooling the interrogator for at least five minutes in 30% of the games played" (1990, p.100).

J. WEIZENBAUM's ironic book about his ELIZA program for psychological study. Shows that the very acumen of the interrogator should also be tested in order to validate the test (1976).

At the time TURING devised his test, only sequential computers were in existence, and their potential performances where abysmally low, compared with the present ones. However, the algorithmic character of sequential computers programs still seems to rule out intelligence for this class of machines, even in chess playing or expert systems. However, the new connection machines and neural type networks, which are able to learn could easily reactualize TURING's test in a new way.

Categories

  • 1) General information
  • 2) Methodology or model
  • 3) Epistemology, ontology and semantics
  • 4) Human sciences
  • 5) Discipline oriented

Publisher

Bertalanffy Center for the Study of Systems Science(2020).

To cite this page, please use the following information:

Bertalanffy Center for the Study of Systems Science (2020). Title of the entry. In Charles François (Ed.), International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics (2). Retrieved from www.systemspedia.org/[full/url]

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