WEEK SEVEN QUESTIONS

WEEK 7 E-BUSINESS QUESTIONS

1) Write a one paragraph describing the Turing test and another paragraph describing an argument against the Turing Test, known as the about the Chinese room.

THE TURING TEST

The turing test is a proposal made by Alan Turing back in 1950 coming up with a  way of answering the question of whether machines (eg. Computers) can think. This test is related to two main ways of testing machines. The first is where Turing suggests whether a digital computer could do well in ‘the imitation game’. He suggested in the future that there will be computers that will do in the certain game.  The second way is were behavioural tests are used for the presence of mind, or thought or intelligence.

THE CHINESE ROOM

John Searle has came up with an argument against the Turing test which is called the chinese room. Searle argues against the claim that ‘appropriately programmed computers literally have cognitive states’.  This therefore argues against Turing’s suggestion that computers can think. They way Searle’s argument is structured is where a ‘hand simulation’ (simply a special kind of digital computation) of an intelligent agent in circumstances in which we might be hesitant to suggest there is any appropriate intelligence behind the behaviour that has been simulated.

Reference:

Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy. (2011). The Turing Test. (Spring 2011 ed.). Retrieved on the 7^th May, 2011 from http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/turing-test/#MeasInt

2) Can virtual agents succeed in delivering high-quality customer service over the Web? Think of examples which support or disprove the question or just offer an opinion based on your personal experience.

The main examples of virtual agents are:

•       Mobile agents can relocate their execution on to different processors)

•       Distributed agents are executed on physically distinct machines

•       Autonomous agents are capable of modifying the way in which they achieve their objectives

•       Intelligent agents exhibit some aspects of artificial intelligence, such as learning and reasoning

•       Fuzzy agents

I believe that virtual agents could deliver high quality customer service over the web, however, there is still the ambiguitious questions which could not be answered by a virtual agent and would need a real life person to research and answer these questions. I do believe that in the future that virtual agents could be used in assistance with real life people.

Knox,I. (2011).  Automata week 7 power point presentation