If you could pose a question to a Turing test candidate, what would it be? [closed]

Question

How would you distinguish the man from the machine?

Answer 1

I'd just ask him "If you could pose a question to a turing test candidate, what would it be?".

Answer 2

What is the meaning of...'); DROP TABLE Responses;

Answer 3

Humans use rapport to sniff out artifice

Essentially this means that it will always take a series of questions and subsequent analysis of the answers to establish if the anonymous entity at the end of the line is a human being or not. A single question will not achieve this.

I suppose you could ask "Will you meet me in the car park in 2 minutes?" and then see what turns up.

Answer 4

You’re in a desert walking along in the sand when all of the sudden you look down, and you see a tortoise, it’s crawling toward you. You reach down, you flip the tortoise over on its back. The tortoise lays on its back, its belly baking in the hot sun, beating its legs trying to turn itself over, but it can’t, not without your help. But you’re not helping. Why is that?

Answer 5

"Why are manhole covers round?"

Perhaps followed up with "Where do you see yourself in 5 years?"

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EDIT: I've come to think of that Douglas Hofstadter has done a delightful piece on this exact subject (including the highest rated answer) and found an online version at http://www.cse.unr.edu/~sushil/class/ai/papers/coffeehouse.html. Especially the scenario where he tries to disclose Nicolai in the "Post Scriptum" section is a fantastic read. I believe I read this in Metamagical Themes.

Answer 6

Challenge it to a game of "Global Thermonuclear War". Or perhaps a game of tic-tac-toe versus itself.

Answer 7

Anything ironic. So far machines are totally incapable of interpreting jokes and irony. Although some people are too, so you may get some false negatives ;-)

Answer 8

I'd see if it could handle lots of slang, incorrect grammar and implicit meaning as efficiently as a human:

Dude, is you some kinda fancy-schmancy circuit board or does you have DNA?

Answer 9

"Will your answer to this question be negative?"

Note: the original Turing test proposal was for the computer to pretend to be a woman, the interviewer to be a man, and the test limited to five minutes. If the man was unable to determine if the computer was a woman or not in five minutes, we would have to conclude that the computer was intelligent, "because the converse is not polite".

Answer 10

"Are you Watson?" :-p

Jokes aside, I think it is impossible to determine man from machine with a single question, especially without any context info.

Answer 11

How much wood, would a woodchuck chuck, if a woodchuck would chuck wood?

Answer 12

What is the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow?

Answer 13

If you were to answer dishonestly, how would you answer this question?

Answer 14

So I see that Fred A. Niedle was fired for woobling the wotsits. What do you think about the whole affair?

I'd expect an AI to try to Eliza it back to me somehow, and a human to respond with confusion or humour.

Answer 15

Ask a logical question which requires infinite recursion for evaluation and hope the programmers weren't smart enough to account for that kind of question.

Answer 16

Well most likely computer has problem answering an alternative to problem :

Which came first: the chicken or the egg?

Answer 17

What would an M look like if you were standing on your head?

Answer 18

"If humans said nothing to prove that they're human, what would you say?"

Answer 19

How are you feeling today? and go on with empathic conversation.

Answer 20

I'd ask something I've always wondered:

"Mary Ann or Ginger?"

Answer 21

"When was the last time you prevaricated?"

Semantically it's a sensible question, and a computer would probably try and answer it, but a human being would just say - "Awee... c'mon.. how the hell would I know?"

Anything with that pattern, ie. linguistically, semantically, and culturally a sensible question, but something which no real person would ask, or answer. (This can be done, without going into deeply personal areas - in fact, the computer might be programmed to handle those with "that's private").

Answer 22

I would ask anything where there isn't a clear cut answer and which usually involves strong or varied opinions and/or emotions from human participants. For example:

• What do do you think of the current situation in Libya?
• What are your thoughts on the recent disaster in Japan?
• How do you think we should resolve the humanitarian crisis in the Ivory Coast?
• Why do you think Coldplay became so popular?
• What do you think about Charlie Sheen?
• What new technologies should we foresee in the next twenty years?

Answer 23

"Sorry I'm late. Got held up at my mother's funeral."

Would any intelligent being other than a human respond to that as a human would? I think not.

Answer 24

First: "Are you a programmer?"

If no, not a program.

If yes:

"Do you prefer emacs or vi?"

If that doesn't start a flamewar, it's a machine :)

Answer 25

Why might a guy say to another guy "Oh, be a fine girl kiss me"?

Answer 26

Whats is your date of birth :) And mother's name too :):):)