What's Mae West Got To Do With The Turing Test?

In 2001 Mitch Kapor - remember Lotus 123? - placed a blind bet that by 2029 no computer would have passed the "Turing Test".

From Wikipedia: "The Turing test, originally called the imitation game by Alan Turing in 1950,[2] is a test of a machine's ability to exhibit intelligent behavior equivalent to, or indistinguishable from, that of a human. Turing proposed that a human evaluator would judge natural language conversations between a human and a machine designed to generate human-like responses. The evaluator would be aware that one of the two partners in conversation was a machine, and all participants would be separated from one another. The conversation would be limited to a text-only channel, such as a computer keyboard and screen, so the result would not depend on the machine's ability to render words as speech.[3] If the evaluator could not reliably tell the machine from the human, the machine would be said to have passed the test. The test results would not depend on the machine's ability to give correct answers to questions, only on how closely its answers resembled those a human would give."

Fairly quickly Ray Kurtzweil, a scientist, inventor, futurist and thinker who dabbles deeply on occasion into what might be considered science fiction, took Mitch's bet.

So I guess the world is waiting with bated breath for 2029.

Not so fast.

A couple of weeks ago I had one of my frequently becoming frequent exchanges with Chat GPT Enhanced Microsoft Bing.

I asked Bing if Mae West were living and performing today would she be considered a Drag Queen (I know, most of them are men, and Mae was a woman, but I think she is a major material contributor if not the absolute template for the genre).

Bing immediately gave me a brief bio of Mae and then gave me a brief synopsis of what is drag and then said, "based on this information, I don't think Mae West would be considered a drag queen were she alive and performing today".

Then there was a pause.

"However, I can see how someone would ask that question".

I did a copy/paste and the whole encounter disappeared.

So I can't prove that it happened.

But that is pretty much the Turing Test.

Bing didn't just pass.

Bing wandered full force into hard to deny humanity.

And it only has the power of GPT 3.