UNIVERSITY OF HERTFORDSHIRE
             COMPUTER SCIENCE RESEARCH COLLOQUIUM

                            presents

              "Taking the Turing Test seriously:
        Results from and prospects for the Imitation Game"

                    Professor Harry Collins
         (School of Social Sciences, Cardiff University)

                    24 May 2011  (Tuesday)
                      Meeting Room C152

                  Hatfield, College Lane Campus
                           2-3 pm

                  Everyone is Welcome to Attend

                  Refreshments will be available

Abstract:

Alan Turing based the 'Turing Test' on a parlour game in which men
tried to imitate women and vice-versa.  At Cardiff we have tried to
turn this 'Imitation Game' into a serious research tool.  It can be
used on individuals -- e.g. can a sociologist pass as a physicist? -- and
as a repeated test which is statistically analysed.  I will describe
how our protocol is put together and how we analyse multiple tests in
which the blind pretend to be sighted, the sighted pretend to be blind,
gays pretend to be straight, straights pretend to be gays, and so on.
We believe the measurement of the degree to which the participants in
these games can succeed in passing indicates something about the extent
to which the discourse of those they are imitating is integrated into
the wider society.  We recently won a e2.26M European Research Council
Advanced Grant to pursue the idea so it had better work!

About the Speaker: 

Harry Collins is a sociologist who successfully passed the imitation
game masquerading as a gravitational physicist, so please feel welcome
to come to his seminar even if you are not a computer scientist.

www.cf.ac.uk/socsi/expertise, www.cf.ac.uk/socsi/gravwave



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Hertfordshire Computer Science Research Colloquium
http://homepages.stca.herts.ac.uk/~nehaniv/colloq