Page - 187 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 03/01

Review: The Turing Test | 187www.jrfm.eu 2017, 3/1, 185–190 from returning to earth. to quote spock in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (Nicholas Meyer, Us 1982), “Logic clearly dictates that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few (or the one).” But Star Trek also teaches us that it is all too human to try and break these laws of logic. Because of the crew’s confinement on Europa, its relative immortality has become a curse. What first appeared to the crew to be one of the greatest dis- coveries of humankind, the possibility of living forever, in fact means that its involuntary exile may continue for centuries. the reason earth is unwilling to permit the return of the crew – contaminated as it is with organism 119 – to the planet is that the organism does not differentiate between good and bad. It revitalizes both good and bad organisms, both human DNA and cancer, as well as bacteria and viruses, in the same way. Death, The Turing Test ponders, may be something fearful, but it must not be eradicated altogether. immortality is presumed to be a blessing, but it quickly turns into a horror. Last but not least, crew members are only able to free themselves from tom’s influence by removing the chips from their arms. Unfortunately this leads to the loss of the whole forearm, leaving them handicapped for the rest of their days, which is pretty long given their contamination with organism 119. the organ- ism repairs damaged DNA, but cannot re-grow an amputated limb. On a deeper level, the game hints at the notion that humankind can only free itself from its own dependence on ICT at the cost of great sacrifice. testiNG the A.i. the game The Turing Test is named after a test developed by Alan turing in 1950 to assess the ability of any given A.i. to exhibit intelligent behavior to such an extent that humans cannot recognize the A.i. as such anymore. A typical test involves two humans (one a responder and the other the interrogator) and one A.i. (a responder). the interrogator poses questions to parties A and B, one of whom is a real human being, and the other the A.i. if the human interrogator cannot tell which of his two dialogue partners is the human, the A.i. is said to have passed the test. the A.i. is then considered to have some kind of ‘con- sciousness’ of the world and its own being. the game The Turing Test develops this concept on different levels. Level 1. As has been seen, when Ava enters the base on europa, the rooms seem to have been rearranged by the crew to form one giant turing test. As toms observes: ‘these rooms are turing tests … designed to tell humans and machines apart. typical problems, only solvable by a human. A combination of logical and lateral thinking.’ the player assumes that he or she controls Ava, whom Tom has called to the rescue as he is unable to solve the room puzzles; they were especially designed to keep him out.