Question: is it easy to determine the difference between humans and robots

Huma Shah answered on 7 Nov 2016:

Hello Bubble789,

Good question! In short spurts, it is hard to say.

In Turing tests when the Judge has to try and guess if they are talking to a human or a machine (as ‘witnesses’), just by their text answers (the judge is not allowed to sit in the same room as the witnesses, not allowed to hear, see, or touch them), it’s not always easy.

For example, the exchange below is taken from a real Turing test conversation held at Bletchley Park in 2012 between a human interrogator and a hidden witness, can you say whether the witness is human or machine?:

Interrogator: all birthdays are special. name three items of clothing
Witness: Frank, James and Betty

The witness was a human, in fact my boss and the professor who supervised my PhD! What this exchange shows is that human beings do not always give straight forward answers to a question! Machines sometimes can 🙂

For robots, their skin is not yet at the technological scale of human skin, but again in brief views you might be mistaken for thinking a robot is human, look at these humanoids designed by a Japanese Professor, Hiroshi Ishiguro:
http://www.geminoid.jp/en/index.html

Huma