It would be great if I never had to see another eliza. If it can't string more than 2 utterances together, its not AI, it certainly doesnt pass the Turing test, and its a waste of time.
It has turned out that in practice, bots that "can't string more than 2 utterances together" in fact can pass the (reduced) Turing test when put online and made available to random people. People have been seen to spend hours talking to these bots with no apparent sign that they know they are talking to a bot.
"Not AI" and "waste of time" I'll agree with, but "doesn't pass the Turing test" is much less clear.
(Many have observed how every time AI sort of creeps up on something we define it as not-AI, but in the case of conversational "AIs" it turns out that it really is the case that blindingly stupid programs can pass it. Full props to Turing for the idea, no sarcasm, great paper fully worthy of its historic status, but it hasn't turned out to be quite as powerful a discriminator as we might have hoped.)
The new form of the problem can be described in terms of a game which we call the 'imitation game." It is played with three people, a man (A), a woman (B), and an interrogator (C) who may be of either sex. The interrogator stays in a room apart front the other two. The object of the game for the interrogator is to determine which of the other two is the man and which is the woman. He knows them by labels X and Y, and at the end of the game he says either "X is A and Y is B" or "X is B and Y is A." The interrogator is allowed to put questions to A and B thus:
C: Will X please tell me the length of his or her hair?
Now suppose X is actually A, then A must answer. It is A's object in the game to try and cause C to make the wrong identification. His answer might therefore be:
"My hair is shingled, and the longest strands are about nine inches long."
In order that tones of voice may not help the interrogator the answers should be written, or better still, typewritten. The ideal arrangement is to have a teleprinter communicating between the two rooms. Alternatively the question and answers can be repeated by an intermediary. The object of the game for the third player (B) is to help the interrogator. The best strategy for her is probably to give truthful answers. She can add such things as "I am the woman, don't listen to him!" to her answers, but it will avail nothing as the man can make similar remarks.
We now ask the question, "What will happen when a machine takes the part of A in this game?" Will the interrogator decide wrongly as often when the game is played like this as he does when the game is played between a man and a woman? These questions replace our original, "Can machines think?"
/end quote
-Eliza