Re: Turing test

["C. Angus Steadman" <angus@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

At 4:31 PM +0900 5/20/98, Martin Mueller wrote:
>Here is a little puzzle for you all:
>a game record between a person and a computer program. Now which is which,
>and why? Please try to form an opinion by looking only at the moves played,

White 44 is a bad mistake, the obvious move is much better; it is easy,
however, to imagine a weak human making this mistake.  The attachment
and hane at 48 and 50... While 48 isn't awful, the followup at 50 is
small.  This seems to be a tesuji that white has learned, he plays it
in 3 corners.  While the attachment at the 3-2 point is joseki, the
followup at the 1-2 isn't.  Since white has been playing joseki
mindlessly, I took this as evidence that white was human: If white thinks
this is joseki, he has learned a pattern incorrectly.  Surely a programer
wouldn't program a bad joseki?  However, this sequence is more telling
in the other direction.  After black losses the stone with 58 and 60, he
learns from his 'mistake' and answers the sequence from then on.  While
this is the wrong lesson, it is learning.  Black is playing like a weak
human.

After white takes gote with 90, black nicely finds big yose in sente, and
punishes white along the left edge when white tenukis with 100, a small
move.  White 100 is somehow human.  I imagine a human not knowing how to
answer 99, so just moving somewhere else.  I have done this.

Next comes the 2 white kills.  White kills the bottom left but neglects the
coup-de-grace, and then captures the 4 stones in the upper right in late
yose, again not finishing.  This is the kicker, for me.  Nemesis used to
have this problem, in reverse.  It would make every move needed to live,
ecxept the simple last one.  Something is broke in the program, and this
particular mistake seems gratingly inhuman.

So, finally, I think the computer is white, the human is black.  I look
forward to the definitive answer...

angus


"Speaking now with the irresponsible imbecility of a private individual and
not with the profundity of a professional advisor..."

Charles Dickens