Seite - 189 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Band 03/01

Review: The Turing Test | 189www.jrfm.eu 2017, 3/1, 185–190 A fiNe LiNe Did any A.i. ever pass the turing test? We could say that tom passed. Although he claimed he needed Ava to pass it, he actually did so himself through Ava, controlling her with the mind chip in her arm. in a way, Ava did not solve the human-only puzzle rooms, tom did. And although Ava thought she was in con- trol, acting of her own free will, she was in fact an instrument of tom. On a deeper level, especially if we bear in mind the computer from the re- stricted area, it could be said that it was not tom who was being tested and/ or who passed the turing test, but the player himself or herself. successfully navigating through the game by solving all the puzzles, which were narratologi- cally designed as a turing test, the player has ‘proved’ himself or herself to be a human of flesh and blood, instead of an A.I. But we have to re-think this position when we return to the restricted-area computer, which continues to claim that you are a robot – both on the level of Ava/tom and on the level of the player. the turing test has been criticized by experts for testing not the ‘humanity’ of the A.i. in question, but only the A.i.’s ability to deceive the human interroga- tor by pretending to be human. the most famous thought experiment in this field is that of the ‘Chinese room’, which also features in the game as one of the restricted areas. An english-speaking man (representing the A.i.) goes into this Chinese room; he has no knowledge of the Chinese language, but possesses a rulebook in english. through a narrow window, a Chinese-speaking man deliv- ers messages to the man inside. the non-Chinese man does not understand a word of these messages, but he is nevertheless able to deliver convincing an- swers to the man outside, using the manual, which instructs him how to answer in Chinese. the Chinese man outside thinks that he is having a conversation with another Chinese person inside, whereas the man inside has no idea of the na- ture of the conversation. the Chinese room experiment implies that it is not necessary for an A.i. to have any ‘understanding’ or ‘consciousness’ at all, as long as it has sufficient knowledge of the rules of human speech and speech interaction to be able to pretend to be human, just like the man inside the Chi- nese room. Using both the turing test and the Chinese room experiment, the player of The Turing Test might well reflect on the nature of being human through rever- sal of the A.i.’s perspective. Maybe language is indeed nothing more than a rule system we use to interact with one another, without truly understanding what each other is saying. Perhaps morality is nothing uniquely human, but is only a ‘rule system’, as tom puts it in the game. And maybe creativity, often con- sidered the most human quality of all, is, indeed, as tom suggests, ‘controlled chaos’. tom states: ‘you believe yourself to be a creative, but in mathematical