Only a few weeks ago I read Harry Harrison and Marvin Minsky’s „The Turing Option“ from 1992. The sci-fi epic is situated in 2023 and it is striking how naive the renowned writer and the AI authority were with their forecast of technological development and esp. of interaction paradigms. Digital paper, wireless connections, embedded computing, gesture based interactions… all this has happened much earlier than in the book and to a greater extend than described.
However, if you watch this conversation of two chatbots it seems that the future of AI foreseen by Harrison and Minsky, is a long way to go from 2011. Nevertheless, the video actually emphasizes the uneasy feeling that I had when reading the book. Somehow, Sven, the robot in „The turing option“ is just too perfectly human. Perhaps we should appreciate, these „cleverbots“ are not…
Find an English review of the book here.
I actually read the German version of the book.