Balkinization: Vice Presidential Turing Test

Vice Presidential Turing Test

Is it Sarah or a Markov chain? You decide.

The burning question posed by the Vice-Presidential Turing Test is not whether machines can think, but whether Vice Presidential candidates can.

Posted 5:30 PM by JB [link]

Comments:

In fairness, her answers, while meaningless and idiotic, are easily distinguishable from the ones this program generates. At this point, though, the only way McCain wins is if (a) the bailout passes in such a way that he personally can take the credit, or (b), he fires Palin. And gives a really sincere-sounding speech explaining why his choice was such a mistake and why he had to put the good of the country over personal political gain and drop her. Unfortunately, neither of these things will happen; instead, their planned ultimate Hail Mary is probably a really nasty Jeremiah Wright ad, or getting an outsider to run ads accusing Obama of being a Muslim.

# posted by

Asher : 6:35 PM

The word salad logic noise problem evident in the computer generated replies to interview questions only magnifies the difficulty the best algorithms exhibit when attempting to quantify societal context. True, Markov and Turing pondered methodical ways to transcend automatism. Perhaps the answer for the instant speaker Palin lies in some of the recent avant guarde thinking at the RSA encription security company. Their recent IT security convention cycle chose as its theme Alan Mathison Turing's work and inspiration. Next year's series of RSA Conferences has selected nineteenth US writer, cryptographer, Edgar Allen Poe as the upcoming conference theme. Here sounds a "tintinnabulation that...musically wells"

# posted by

JohnLopresti : 6:39 PM

Tray said:
In fairness, her answers, while meaningless and idiotic, are easily distinguishable from the ones this program generates.

True. The machine answers were closer to sane.

# posted by

John : 9:11 AM

Just in case our host isn't already familiar with it, Lo! I present "Chomskybot"! Which is just to say in fairness that Palin's amphigory shouldn't surprise anyone, given her line of work.. Or is it just the quality (or lack thereof) that has grabbed our attention?

# posted by

Robert Link : 9:56 AM

JohnLopresti:

No offense, sir, but given your affinity for sesquipedalian discourse, I sometimes wonder if your posts aren't generated by some brilliant program with an Allan Sokol fetish. :)

# posted by

PMS_CC : 7:41 PM