CHSI
Special Exhibitions Gallery, Science Center 251
September 11 - December 20, 2012
GO ASK
A.L.I.C.E:
Turing Tests, Parlor Games, & Chatterbots
Financial support for this exhibition
generously provided by the
David P. Wheatland Charitable Trust.
(Click on images for a closer look.)
“ Can machines think?” This was the question Alan Turing posed in his influential 1950 paper, “Computing Machinery and Intelligence.” Toward answering this question, Turing proposed a parlor game in which an interrogator would converse with two individuals, trying to determine which was the human and which the computer. If the interrogator mistook the computer for the human, that computer could be said to “think”.
This exhibit explores the strange afterlife of the Turing Test as it has circulated in popular, scientific, and commercial cultures. It reexamines elements of Turing’s own interactions with humans and machines, later imaginations of thinking machines, as well as a famous attempt to translate Turing’s parlor game into a real test of artificial intelligence: the Loebner Competition. Visitors to the exhibit will be invited to act as the interrogator in an instantiation of a Turing Test featuring the AI program A.L.I.C.E. Turing’s elegant formulation of the problem of machine thought is here refracted into a complex array of relationships between humans and machines.
GO ASK A.L.I.C.E. in the Harvard Gazette : "Alan Turing at 100"
Enjoy GO ASK A.L.I.C.E. A Panel Discussion:
Presented November 29, 2012
Resources
Former Exhibitions
GO ASK A.L.I.C.E.: Turing Tests, Parlor Games, & Chatterbots
X-Rays of the Soul: Rorschach & The Projective Test
Cold War in the Classroom
Tangible Things
Paper Worlds:
Printing Knowledge in Early Modern Europe
Patent Republic: Materialities in Intellectual Property in 19th-Century America
Benjamin Franklin:
A How-to Guide
Gallery Hours
Putnam Gallery
Science Center 136
Hours:
Monday - Friday
11:00am - 4:00pm
Special Exhibitions Gallery
Hours:
Monday - Friday
9:00am - 5:00pm
Foyer Exhibition Space
Science Center 371
CLOSED FOR INSTALLATION
Free and open to the public.
Children must be escorted by an adult.
Both the Putnam Gallery and Special Exhibitions are closed on University Holidays.
Inquiries: 617-495-2779
Directions
The Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments is located inside the Science Center, 1 Oxford Street, on Harvard's Cambridge campus.
