Exhibition ‘AI: More Than Human’ Features Award-Winning Chatbot Eugene Goostman
Last month Barbican, a London-based arts and learning venue, launched an exhibition AI: More than Human. Exploring the relationship between humans and artificial intelligence, this interactive exhibition is bringing together scientists, researchers, and artists to challenge whatever preconceptions people have about AI.
Among the exhibits, there will be Eugene Goostman, Just AI’s chatbot that in June 2014 fooled a third of judges at the Turing Test competition into thinking he was a real boy.
Named after legendary mathematician and codebreaker Alan Turing and based on his 1950 Q&A game ‘Can Machines Think?’, the Turing Test investigates whether people can detect if they are talking to machines or humans.
Held on the 60th anniversary of Turing’s death, the 2014 competition was organized by the University of Reading in partnership with RoboLaw, an EU-funded organization devoted to the regulation of emerging robotic technologies. There, in a series of five-minute text conversations, Eugene Goostman managed to convince 33% of judges that he was human — something that no computer had ever done before.
“In the field of artificial intelligence, there is no more iconic and controversial milestone than the Turing Test,” said Professor Kevin Warwick of the University of Reading.
Created in Saint Petersburg in 2001, Eugene convincingly pretends to be a 13-year-old Ukrainian boy with a very quirky yet believable backstory: a son of a gynecologist, he loves Eminem, detests Britney Spears (the project was conceived in 2001 — so yes), and does not shy away from dick jokes. He also owns a guinea pig with a very academic music taste (Beethoven’s Ode to Joy, anyone?).
People behind Eugene were part of Princeton AI (which was acquired by Just AI in 2011) and invested a lot of time in developing a character with a believable personality, so Eugene Goostman had received several accolades before passing the test in 2014.
The chatbot had participated in a number of Turing test competitions, including the Loebner Prize contest in 2001, where it finished joint second, it also came in second to chatterbots Jabberwacky and Elbot in 2005 and 2008 respectively.
In June 2012, Goostman won a Turing test competition at Bletchley Park, where in a series of five-minute-long keyboard conversations, the chatbot convinced 29% of the judges that they’d been talking to an actual human.
So, the 2014 event sparked a lot of excitement and was widely discussed in the media. At the same time, some suggested that by choosing a personality of a 13-year-old Ukrainian child the program’s developers hoped Eugene would be forgiven for grammatical errors and lack of general knowledge.
Eugene’s creators wanted a character that felt real and was interesting to talk to. The person who wrote Eugene’s backstory comes from Odesa, the Ukrainian capital of humor, so the team decided to make the chatbot a cocky wisecracker from Odesa.
According to the developers, Eugene was created with the idea of building “a universal framework for different applications.” While it’s “not a smart system,” the chatbot has knowledge of certain facts and possesses basic information about different things. Eugene is capable of doing very basic arithmetic operations and uses an encyclopedia to answer questions. When he doesn’t know the answer, he’ll try to take control of the conversation by asking a question.
The team behind the chatbot demonstrated that it was possible to pass the Turing Test and draw a lot of attention to the field of artificial intelligence. Now we see AI going mainstream and penetrating different the parts of life we don’t expect it to affect. Despite all the controversy, Eugene’s contribution to the AI industry is undoubted.
Eugene’s underlying technologies, revamped and improved, now serve a basis for a range of new products at Just AI. Some of Goostman’s features and peculiarities, which helped the chatbot pass the Turing test at one point were taken into consideration by Just AI to create our own state-of-the-art NLU platform JAICP. Today this platform is used to build other assistants and voice applications, such as robot toy Emelya and BeanQ, which are also presented at the exhibition, automation systems for contact centers, games, and skills for Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant.
Can Eugene be truly taken for a 13-year-old? See for yourself here. If you live in London or plan on visiting the city any time between May 16 and August 26, 2019, drop by the exhibition the Barbican Centre to explore the exhibition AI: More than Human.
