HUMAN VS COMPUTER

    Do you see the difference between a computer and a human? As computers become smarter, it will be difficult to say which ones. In 1950, a scientist by the name of Alan Turing predicted that machines would one day become wiser and more intelligent. He did a test called the Turing test. According to this test, the machine is smart, if you can fool people into thinking you are human.

    Last year, a computer program called Cleverbot passed the test. Cleverbot was made by Rollo Carpenter in 1987. It was a new kind of program that learned to communicate from having conversations with people.

When Carpenter first made Cleverbot, the system did not know any names. He started having text discussions with the program and recorded his comments. When he said "hello", Cleverbot learned the word "hello". When he says, "How are you?" Cleverbot read the phrase, "How are you?"

    Cpenter also had his friends talk to Cleverbot, and these conversations were recorded. Between 1988 and 1997, Cleverbot recorded a few thousand conversations with Carpenter and his associates. This was very limited information, and it was not enough to make the program seem personal.
In 1997, Carpenter turned Cleverbot into a website. Over the next 10 years it recorded five million interviews. Cleverbot now makes 200,000 responses per hour and has text discussions with three million people a month. This gave Cleverbot a lot of details, now he seems to be very human.

    If you ask Cleverbot a question, you look at his records and you get the best answer. You have heard this question thousands of times from real people around the world and you will choose the right answer for your conversation. Now it may not be a clever answer, but it will sound human. The carpenter receives daily emails from people who think he is a liar and who believe that Cleverbot is indeed a computer program.
Last year, Cleverbot passed Turing's exam at a technology festival in India. During the contest, 30 people had a text chat on a computer connected to a secret partner. Half of the computers were connected to Cleverbot and half of the computers were connected to real people. Text chats are then shown on the big screen TVs at the ceremony. Three hundred and thirty-four people at the ceremony then vote on which conversations they think are relevant to a human partner, and which conversations they think are computer-generated. Cleverbot's interviews were thought to be 100% people 59% of the time.

    Try to practice your English with this computer program at Cleverbot.com. Remember, Cleverbot has had millions of conversations with many different types of people. Some of these people were smart, some were stupid, some were funny, some were boring and some were just contemptuous. Cleverbot repeats these conversations, so some of the things Cleverbot says will be stupid, annoying, insulting, or using phrases that are hard to understand.

    There are two things you can do if you do not understand what Cleverbot says. You can ignore it and change the subject, or there is a button for “Think.” This will make Cleverbot answer his question. Before you go to Cleverbot and give it a try, tell us what you think in the comments. 

Do you think you can tell the difference between a person and a computer?
Give us your feedback about Human vs Computer in comments. Thank you