(Non-Computable You: What You Do That Artificial Intelligence Never Will (Discovery Institute Press, 2022) by Robert J. Marks is available here.)
Some
have claimed AI is creative. But “creativity” is a fuzzy term. To talk
fruitfully about creativity, the term must be defined so that everyone
is talking about the same thing and no one is bending the meaning to fit
their purpose. In this and subsequent chapters we will explore what
creativity is, and in the end it will become clear that, properly
defined, AI is no more creative than a pencil.
Lady Ada Lovelace
(1815–1852), daughter of the poet George Gordon, Lord Byron, was the
first computer programmer, writing algorithms for a machine that was
planned but never built.1 She also was quite possibly the
first to note that computers will not be creative—that is, they cannot
create something new. She wrote in 1842 that the computer “has no
pretensions whatever to originate anything. It can do [only] whatever we
know how to order it to perform.”2
Alan Turing disagreed.
Turing is often called the father of computer science, having
established the idea for modern computers in the 1930s.3
Turing argued that we can’t even be sure that humans create, because
humans do “nothing new under the sun”—but they do surprise us. Likewise,
he said, “Machines take me by surprise with great frequency.” So
perhaps, he argued, it is the element of surprise that’s relevant, not
the ability to originate something new.4
Machines can
surprise us if they’re programmed by humans to surprise us, or if the
programmer has made a mistake and thus experienced an unexpected
outcome. 5 Often, though, surprise occurs as a result of
successful implementation of a computer search that explores a myriad of
solutions for a problem. The solution chosen by the computer can be
unexpected. The computer code that searches among different solutions,
though, is not creative. The creativity credit belongs to the computer
programmer who chose the set of solutions to be explored. Shortly, we’ll
give examples from computer searches for making the best move in the
game of GO and for simulated swarms. Both results are surprising and
unexpected, but there is no creativity contributed from computer code.
Alan
Turing, an atheist, wanted to show we are machines and that computers
could be creative. Turing equated intelligence with problem solving, did
not consider questions of consciousness and emotion,6 and referred to people as “human computers.”7
Turing’s version of the “imitation game” was proposed to show that
computers could duplicate the conversational human. This is why the
biographical movie starring Benedict Cumberbatch as Turing was titled
The Imitation Game.
How can computers imitate humans, according to Turing?
The
imitation game (which came to be called the Turing test) simply asks
whether, in a conversational exchange using text (that is, an exchange
in which the participants are hidden from each other), a sufficiently
sophisticated computer can be distinguished from a human. If a
questioner gets lucid, human-sounding answers from the computer, and
believes the computer is in fact a human typing in answers from another
room, then the test has been passed.
(Incidentally, the converse of
the Turing test is easy. Simply ask it to calculate the cube root of
twelve out to ten significant figures. If the answer is almost
immediate, you are talking to a computer.)
There are those who claim that today’s chatbots8
have passed the Turing test. Most famously, a computer program known as
“Eugene Goostman” purportedly passed. One posted subtitle claiming this
reads, “‘Eugene Goostman’ fools 33% of interrogators into thinking it
is human, in what is seen as a milestone in artificial intelligence.”9
But
those making a test often cheat to tweak the outcome. That’s what
Goostman’s programmers did. Goostman supposedly was a Ukrainian, which
meant English was not his first language, so his poor grammar could be
excused. He was supposedly a teenager, so any lack of depth of
understanding could be chalked up to his naïve intellect. Likewise, his
tendency to be silly and deflect questions could be considered typical
teenage behavior. In short, Goostman’s software character was gamed to
pass the Turing test.
Here are a couple of examples of an exchange between Goostman and his questioner.10
Goostman is first asked a question proposed in the first line of the
lyrics of the song “Close to You,” popularized by the Carpenters:
Questioner: Why do birds suddenly appear?
Goostman: Just because 2 plus 2 is 5! By the way, what’s your occupation? I mean — could you tell me about your work?
We
see here an often-used cheat in chatbots. If an answer is not known,
the chatbot responds with an unrelated question to derail the
conversation’s direction.
Here’s another exchange with Eugene Goostman:
Questioner: It is ok, I get sick of sick people. How is your stomach feeling today? Is it upset maybe?
Goostman: I think you can’t smile at all. I bet you work in a funeral agency.
As you can see, Goostman’s answers here are elusively non-responsive.
Selmer
Bringsjord correctly notes the Turing test is gamed by programmers.
“Gamed” here is a nice word for being an elusive cheat. As Bringsjord
writes, “Though progress toward Turing’s dream is being made, it’s
coming only on the strength of clever but shallow trickery.”11
When
gaming the system, chatbots can deflect detection by answering
questions with other questions, giving evasive answers, or admitting
ignorance. They display general intellectual shallowness as regards
creativity and depth of understanding.
Goostman answered questions
with questions like, “By the way, what’s your occupation?” He also tried
to change topics with conversational whiplash responses like “I bet you
work in a funeral agency.” These are examples of the “clever but
shallow trickery” Bringsjord criticized.
What, then, do Turing tests
prove? Only that clever programmers can trick gullible or uninitiated
people into believing they’re interacting with a human. Mistaking
something for human does not make it human. Programming to shallowly
mimic thought is not the same thing as thinking. Rambling randomness
(such as the change-of-topic questions Goostman spit out) does not
display creativity.
“I propose to consider the question, ‘Can
machines think?’ Turing said. Ironically, Turing not only failed in his
attempt to show that machines can be conversationally creative, but also
developed computer science that shows humans are non-computable.
You may also wish to read the earlier excerpts published here:
Why you are not — and cannot be —
computable. A computer science prof explains in a new book that
computer intelligence does not hold a candle to human intelligence. In
this excerpt from his forthcoming book, Non-Computable You, Robert J.
Marks shows why most human experience is not even computable.
and
The Software of the Gaps: An excerpt from Non-Computable You.
In his just-published book, Robert J. Marks takes on claims that
consciousness is emerging from AI and that we can upload our brains. He
reminds us of the tale of the boy who dug through a pile of manure
because he was sure that … underneath all that poop, there MUST surely
be a pony!
1 Lovelace is often credited with writing an
algorithm for Charles Babbage’s “Analytical Engine,” a machine that was
planned but never built. There is some controversy as to whether
Lovelace or Babbage wrote this first program. In any case, Lovelace
undoubtedly was involved to an extensive degree in the very earliest
computer programs, and she was also the first to say that a computer
could be programmed to do more than merely compute. For an overview of
her contributions, see Christopher Hollings, Ursula Martin, and Adrian
Rice, “Ada Lovelace and the Analytical Engine,” Bodleian Libraries (July 26, 2018).
2 Lady Lovelace, Appendix I to Faster Than Thought: A Symposium on Digital Computing Machines, ed. B.V. Bowden (London: Pitman, 1953), 398.
3
For an overview of the similarities and differences between Babbage’s
and Turing’s machines, see Nathan Zeldes, “Babbage and Turing: Two Paths
to Inventing the Computer,” Nathan Zeldes (website), April 29, 2021.
4 Alan Turing, “Computing Machinery and Intelligence,” Mind 49, no. 235 (October 1950): 433–460.
5
Turing concedes that when machines surprise him, it tends to be because
of traceable human error in his calculations. He also anticipates the
objection that machine “surprises” are “due to some creative mental act
on my part, and reflect no credit on the machine,” but does not answer
this objection except to say it leads back to the question of
consciousness, which “we must consider closed.” Turing, “Computing
Machinery and Intelligence,” section titled “Lady Lovelace’s Objection.”
6 Turing, “Computer Machinery and Intelligence,” section titled “The Argument from Consciousness.”
7 In Turing’s “Computing Machinery” article he refers to “human computers” no fewer than ten times.
8
Chatbots are computer programs that respond in a human-like way in
text-based exchanges. You might have interacted with a chatbox that
popped up on your screen to offer help or answer questions. Chatbots are
useful to businesses because they can function as digital help desks.
But they are limited in the questions they can answer, and can only
respond as they are programmed to respond.
9 Press Association, “Computer Simulating 13-Year-Old Boy Becomes First to Pass Turing Test,” Guardian, June 9, 2014.
10 George D. Montanez, “Detecting Intelligence: The Turing Test and Other Design Detection Methodologies,”
Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Agents and
Artificial Intelligence, vol. 2 (Setubal, Portugal: Science and
Technology Publications, 2016), 517–523.
11 Selmer
Bringsjord, Paul Bello, and David Ferrucci, “Creativity, the Turing
Test, and the (Better) Lovelace Test,” in The Turing Test: The Elusive
Standard of Artificial Intelligence, ed. James H. Moor (Boston: Kluwer
Academic Publishers, 2003), 215–239.
Mind Matters
features original news and analysis at the intersection of artificial
and natural intelligence. Through articles and podcasts, it explores
issues, challenges, and controversies relating to human and artificial
intelligence from a perspective that values the unique capabilities of
human beings. Mind Matters is published by the Walter Bradley Center for Natural and Artificial Intelligence.
Marks: Artificial Intelligence Is No More Creative Than a Pencil – Walter Bradley Center for Natural and Artificial Intelligence
