Chatbot

50 Things That Made the Modern Economy

BBC

Business

4.8 • 2.6K Ratings

🗓️ 26 August 2019

⏱️ 10 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

It's claimed that some computers can now pass the Turing test: convincing people that they are human. Tim Harford asks how important that distinction is, and what it means for the future of human interaction.

Transcript

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0:00.0	50 Things That Made The Modern Economy With Tim Harford
0:18.6	Robert Epstein was looking for love.
0:21.7	The year being 2006, he was looking online.
0:28.1	He began a promising email exchange with a pretty brunette in Russia.
0:35.6	Epstein was disappointed.
0:37.6	He wanted more than a pen friend, let's be frank.
0:40.5	But she was warm and friendly.
0:44.5	Soon she confessed she was developing a crush on him.
0:52.4	I have very special feelings about you.
0:56.9	It, in the same way as the beautiful flower blossoming in my soul, I only cannot explain.
1:05.5	I shall wait your answer holding my fingers have crossed.
1:13.1	The correspondence blossomed.
1:15.6	It took a long while for Epstein to notice that Ivana never really responded directly
1:20.8	to his questions.
1:22.7	She'd write about taking a walk in the park, having conversations with her mother, and
1:27.7	repeat sweet nothings about how much she liked him.
1:31.9	Suspicious, he eventually sent Ivana a line of pure bang on the keyboard gibberish.
1:39.0	She responded with another email about her mother.
1:43.2	At last Robert Epstein realized the truth.
1:47.6	Ivana was a chatbot.
1:51.3	What makes the story surprising isn't that a Russian chatbot managed to trick a lonely
1:56.2	middle-aged Californian man, it's that the man who was tricked was one of the founders
	...

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