Figure out if your chat partner is human or an AI chatbot in this Turing Test game
Human or Not? is an adventure into how convincing AI can be.
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What you need to know
Exciting new forms of technology usually follow a similar trend. Some manage to progress from a patched-together concept to mainstream tools more successfully than others, but there’s no denying thatChatGPThad a hand in the recent explosion of language learning models (LLMs) making their way into everyday life. It seems the natural progression from there is to turn everything into a game, and this latest one would have either impressed Alan Turing or freaked him out. You decide.
AI21 LabsdevelopedHuman or Not?and it’s exactly what it sounds like. Start the game and a random chat partner is selected. The catch is, you don’t know for sure whether that partner is a human being or an AI-powered chatbot. It’s up to you to decipher the answer with a short series of messages. If you ever thought Google’s reCAPTCHA two-factor authentication images were getting accurate to the point of concern, wait until you see how chatbots can imitate the poor spelling and unusual grammar of regular people.
My first couple of encounters seemed like a laughably poor effort from a real person trying to sound like a machine, but it turns out that the robots behind this game are pretty clever at appearing to be a little dim. Curious inconsistencies with capital letters and even littering sentences with slang had me second-guessing early on. Still, the big giveaway is usually when a conversation ends immediately because the other player has quit.
It’s an interesting break from talking toBing Chat, which feels a little more pedestrian compared to itsmore unhinged days of wearing the ‘Sydney’ codenameand playing Human or Not? quickly brought me back to how I felt duringthe early days of ChatGPTwhen it would provide answers ranging from inaccurate to insane. Watching AI assistants morph into something more accessible and balanced has me forgetting how convincing they could be if the restraints were off.
Head to theHuman or Not? websiteand try it out for yourself. You might even run into me as I try to imitate a well-meaning chatbot, but so far, I’ve mostly only convinced my fellow humans that I am also a fleshy, brain-having member of the species. Removing a search-focused element likePrometheus on Bing Chatleaves you with nothing but the layer responsible for impersonating a genuine assistant, but this is purely for fun.
Still, those movies about sentient robot butlers are starting to feel a little more realistic. Maybe we shouldstop asking them stupid or dangerous thingsjust in case a GPT-powered helper remembers all the times I asked it silly questions and requested highbrow topicsexplained to me like we’re monkeys. I hope not. Unless it found that stuff as funny as I did. Fingers crossed.
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Ben is a Senior Editor at Windows Central, covering everything related to technology hardware and software. He regularly goes hands-on with the latest Windows laptops, components inside custom gaming desktops, and any accessory compatible with PC and Xbox. His lifelong obsession with dismantling gadgets to see how they work led him to pursue a career in tech-centric journalism after a decade of experience in electronics retail and tech support.
