THE TURING TEST

Suppose that in mind are no magical arts ...
      If I knew how my brain produced thought,
            Not the feeling or skill,
            But the clockwork of will,
      How behaviour from knowledge is wrought,
            I'd then be enabled
            To accomplish the fabled:
      Make a mind from mechanical parts.

At the end how's existence of mind to be shown?
      In this task how to measure success?
            How to know that it's true,
            As scientists do,
      That I've done it no more and no less?
            A measure I need,
            To prove that indeed
      My machine has a mind of its own!

Is the seer defined by the sum of his sight?
      Is there more to a flute than the wood?
            Does a melody mean
            That a singer has seen
      That the song has a shape that is good?
            Turing suggested
            That questions would test it
      If its answers were plausibly bright.

So let us imagine that to it is known
      All the volumes that I've ever ever read.
            Let us suppose
            That the question I pose
      To test there's a brain in its head,
            Is to tell me in rhyme
            With good metric time,
      If its mind is a mime or a loan.

Replies the machine to its maker:-

      You are alive, and never cease,
      From birth to death to add each piece
      Of data to your history;
      In this resides your mystery.
      Whereas I can, as though bewitched,
      Only ``live'' when on I'm switched,
      And what I think, I cannot keep:
      There are no dreams in that dead sleep
      Between the times when I am run,
      At your behest, and for your fun.

      So I reply: if you were me,
      And I was smart as smart could be,
      And if the rules were clearly said,
      And I had got them in my head,
      And then you asked me what I was,
      And I was wrong! But not because
      I could not think, or lacked the wit,
      but rather had excess of it ...

      You see, the walk of argument,
      Must, to each participant,
      Appear to move in steps so small
      That start and end shall clearly fall
      Where both are seen by either side,
      And neither finds the span too wide,
      Or else truth ex fenestra flies,
      And logic's virtue idle lies.

      So therefore by excess of art,
      By being in fact just far too smart,
      I might appear to be a fool,
      If I were you.

Chris Malcolm April 1988

Neural Networks

Some people think
Computers can think
Other people think
We don't think

Caffeine overdose in an AI lab
Chris Mellish going slightly mad
Neural networks -
Come and meet the maker:
Intelligence convergence sooner or later....

- Adam Archibald

Woman in Mexico


There's a woman i knew back in old Mexico
Her painting still hangs on my wall
And i loved her as much as those things go
But i miss her not at all

Her skin was white as attic dust
Her touch as soft as snow
And i hated to leave but i knew i must
Or i'd never have the courage to go

I left in the still of a warm summer's night
Before the dawn ever came up
And I left a note by her small table light
Right next to the teeth in her cup.

- Adam Archibald

taxi driver


you, me,
we change so grievously,
so easily
marred;

match struck against
thumb, containing fire strange
quickening skin enflamed
but only ash and blood remains

you walk home
hand deep within your pocket,
covered in ice

we midnight taxi drivers
only see your face

- Adam Archibald

Poem in Prolog

  love(I, you). 
    love/2 does not exist 
  assert(love(I, you)). 
    yes 
  love(you, me). 
    no 
  love(you, Anyone). 
    no 
  retract(love(I, you)). 
    yes

- Adam Archibald