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Mechanical Conversation 1800, 1900, 2000 – from von Kempelen's ‘Speech Organ' to ‘Alice the Chatterbot'.

Is it possible to construct a machine whose conversation could be taken for human? From Descartes to Turing, from von Kempelen to the programmers of ALICE, cybernetic theorists and engineers have posed this question. The machines they built to answer it are described below – a sobering tale.

Published in:Code / Kodikas Vol. 34; no. 1-2; pp. 167 - 175
Main Author: Rossbach, Sabine
Format: Article
Published: Narr Francke Attempto Verlag GmbH & Co.KG 2011
Subjects:
Humanoid robots
Chatbots
Human-artificial intelligence interaction
Computer programming
Von Kempelen, Wolfgang
Computer programmers
Online Access:View this record in EBSCOhost
Summary:Is it possible to construct a machine whose conversation could be taken for human? From Descartes to Turing, from von Kempelen to the programmers of ALICE, cybernetic theorists and engineers have posed this question. The machines they built to answer it are described below – a sobering tale.