Project 4 Script

“What are the odds that you think it’ll work?” inquired Jacquard.  “I can’t really make an accurate prediction,” Babbage responded, “When put into an atmosphere like this, you’ll never really know how they’ll respond.”  His doubt was justified.  Even with year being 2142, it was yet that anyone could develop intelligence that could surpass the rigor of the Modern Turing Test. 

It was truly how amazing how far the test had progressed since its conception by the computer scientist Albert Turing in 1950.  Even the few number of terminals and primitive participants of tests that dated in the mid two thousands paled in comparison to the scale and complexity of the setup today.  Five minutes may have sufficed for a standard for the tests of a century ago, but now it was restricted to simply 5000 interactions.  Granted, this still only took a few seconds, the standard of human interaction with a keyboard was no longer needed since output could be gathered through the network receptor that was now hardwired into every human brain.

For Babbage and Jacquard this was their fourth entry into the annual competition, and both computed that their chances of success compared to previous years had increased dramatically.  While structurally the human brain had been completely reconstructed years ago, this wasn’t enough.  In order to create a contestant for the Modern Turing Test, it was important how these connections actually worked. 

“It’s started,” Jacquard alerted Babbage.  Both tracked the conversation as it happened, each monitoring the output presented by the query.     Greetings were met with compliments.  Historical events were mentioned and discussed.  Even conversation that appeared to exchange emotion were observed.  However, the dreaded query involving Ackermann’s function was inevitable posed.  Both watch as higher and higher values of the mathematical function were posed, each time returned by a correct integer answer.

A(4,2) was posed, and both realized that it was over.  Sure enough, computing the value of the 19,729 digit number proved to be too great for the subject.  Both artificial intelligences looked over at the human subject, sitting exhausted in a chair in the tests containment room after attempting to calculate the number.  Despite the fact that the pair did obtain the “Most Machine” prize, it turned out the synthetic enhancement to their subject’s brain simply wasn’t enough.  “Do you calculate it to be possible,” Jacquard inquired, “that we’ll ever be able to create human intelligence that is comparable to us machines?”