I think it’s fun to be human, but it seems lately I run into humans who aren’t enjoying it. While waiting in line at 7-11 today I witnessed a human get angry when his lottery scratch-off card didn’t win him millions. His vocabulary burned its way from one of my ears right through to the other.
I love to watch people wherever I go and sometimes the humans I see look more like robots than people. No facial expressions, no joy, no empathy no nothing. I think robots are becoming more human than some humans. I’m not the only one who thinks this way.
The Loebner Prize competition was created to determine if a computer can think like a human or actually be more human than a human. (This is based on Alan Turing’s test for determining if a computer can think like a human.)
In 2009 Brian Christian participated in the Loebner Prize competition along with four other humans competing against five artificial intelligences to determine who was the most human.
During the competition, each of the four judges typed a conversation with one of the humans for five minutes, and then one of the A.I. for five minutes. The conversation could range from small talk to trivia questions to celebrity gossip or philosophy. At the end of the conversation, the judges had to reflect and decide which one was the most human.
The computer only lost by one vote.
Maybe we need to focus on being more human. Mistakes, successes, joy, failure, and everything else mixed into this soup of life.