Week 7 Introduction to Digital Automata

Introduction to Digital Automata

Many businesses have the opportunity to introduce some elements of digital automation. As the podcast on the Digital Enterprise points out, customer service is easy to conceptualise and to introduce at a simple level. A businesses Q&A page is a type of basic automata.

1) Check this link to my ‘intelligent’ cybertwin which I also mentioned in the Powerpoint. You may like to create your own cybertwin as well. The more you 'train' your twin, the better the responses will be. While it is just a fun exercise, Think of the opportunities. Imagine if we had a cybertwin that could answer your questions about the course. Or perhaps a shopping assistant?

The dream of scientists and business leaders alike is a machine that can think. Sounds like science fiction but it is closer than you may think. Alan Turing first wrote about the possibilities in the 1940's.

2) Write a one paragraph describing the Turing test and another paragraph describing an argument against the Turing Test, known as the about the Chinese room.
The Turing test is a test of machine's ability ti exhibit intelligent behaviour, a proposal for a test of a machine's capability to demonstrate thought. The test was introducted by Alan Turing in his 1950 paper 'Computing Machinery and Intelligence'. The power and appeal of the Turing test derives frrom ots simplicity, it provides something that can actually be measured to define "intelligence" and "thinking" which are sufficiently precise and general to be applied to machines. The format of the test allows the interrogator to give the machine a wide variety of intellectual tasks. However, the Turing test can be used as a measure of a machine of a machine's abilty to thinkonly if one assumes that an interrogator can determine if a machine is thinking by comparing its behaviour with human behaviour. Also, Turing himself did not explicity state that the Turing test could be used as a measure of intelligence, or any other human quality. But still the test has proven to be both highly influential and widely criticized in the years since 1950, and it is an essential concept in the philosophy of artificial intelligence.
There was a proposal of argument against the Turing Test known as the "Chinese room". Jonn Searle's 1980 paper concludes the Turing Test cannot prove that a  machine can think. The argument has been widely criticied, and it has been endorsed as well.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_test

The video (linked in the Powerpoint) 'Creativity: The Mind, Machines, and Mathematics: Public Debate' is a debate which asks the question 'will machines one day achieve consciousness'. Following on from this debate consider the following question -

3) Can virtual agents succeed in delivering high-quality customer service over the Web? Think of examples which support or disprove the question or just offer an opinion based on your personal experience. Write you answer on your blog page or express an opinion on this voice discussion board (it's simple to join). If you choose this option please link (live in an hour or so) to it from your blog page.