"Hey, man, it's good to see you," Jake said as he came through the lobby doors and took Stewart's hand. They exchanged pleasantries as Stuart led him down the hall toward the lab.
"So can you tell me what this is all about?" Jake asked.
"Well, it's pretty simple," Stuart replied. "As you know, we've been doing some work in machine learning, and we've had a few remarkable breakthroughs recently. I wanted to put on a little show-and-tell of what we have so far, and maybe you can take the results upstairs."
"Sounds good. When do we start?" Jake watched Stuart fish an access card out of his lab pocket and slide it through the door access slot. The lock on the door, labeled "Lab 8", clicked and Stewart pushed it open.
When Jake stepped inside, he saw a basic desk with a chair against a wall with a keyboard and monitor on top. On the opposite wall was a one-way mirror. The walls were gray, and the room still had the smell of the new maroon carpet.
"So, this is lab 8," Stuart said. "Monica's on the other side of the glass here. Hey, Monica." Stewart tapped on the glass, and speakers clicked on from the ceiling. Over the intercom a female voice said, "Hey, Stu. Who's your friend?"
"This is Jake Hanson from upstairs. I want to give him a little demo of our project. Can you set up series B for us in here?"
"Sure thing," said Monica, then clicked off the intercom. The monitor on the desk came to life with the Substance logo, a floating gray ellipse above a blue field. This was quickly replaced with a black screen and some white text in a pleasant web-2.0 font. Stuart encouraged Jake to sit at the desk. "All you need to do is type here what you want to say. When you've got it, press Enter to send it. The machine will respond. At the end, we'll ask you some questions and see what you think." Jake looked at the blinking prompt at the bottom of the blank screen. "Is this a Turing Test? Is this thing going to ask me about my feelings?" "Yeah, it's a Turing Test," Stuart said. "At the end, we'll see if you think you're talking to a computer or a human." A quiet tune started to play in the room, and Stuart fumbled for a phone in his pocket. He pressed the answer button and held it to his head, "One second, please." He returned to Jake. "I was expecting this call. You should be OK to start by yourself, I think, and I'll come back in a bit to see how you're doing?" Jake shrugged. "Sure." Stuart headed towards the door. "I shouldn't be too long. If you have any problems, Monica's observing through the glass; just speak out and she'll give you a hand." And with that, he exited the room. Jake turned toward the machine, looking at the blank monitor once again, then stretched his fingers and started to type. "Hello," he wrote, and pressed Enter. The text moved to the top of the screen, preceded by "jake:". It sat there a moment before there was a reply: "Martin: Hi." said the text. Well, that's not exactly encouraging, thought Jake. "How are you?" he asked it. Another short delay. "Martin: Why are you interested in whether or not I am?" the machine prompted. This response seemed familiar, but Jake plodded on. "Can't we be Civil?" Jake submitted. A new answer appeared immediately: "Martin: Say, do you have any psychological problems?" Jake scowled. The company had spent a lot of money on this research department. Surely they had done more than copied and pasted the code for Eliza into a terminal. He tried one that he knew would get a specific response: "I don't get along with my mother." The machine "thought" for a moment, then spat back the expected response, "Do you wish to be able to get along with your mother?" "Monica?" Jake called out, a little concerned. In a moment, the intercom clicked on. "Is there something wrong Mr. Hanson?" "Yeah, are you sure you loaded the right program on here? This one looks an awful lot like Eliza." "One sec," she said. A moment later she replied, "I'm so sorry, did Dr. Ennis not say Series D?" Relieved, Jake replied, "No, it was a 'B' as in 'Boy'." "Ah, well that makes a lot more sense. Hold on and I'll set you up again," she said. The screen on the desk went dead briefly, then came back online with the logo before switching back to the blank input screen. "Ok, you should be good now. Sorry about that." "No problem," Jake said. "Thanks." Looking at the screen again, he re-started his dialogue with the computer: Hello. In a moment, the computer responded, "Hello?" But while Jake was thinking of how to respond, random stray characters started to appear on the screen. In a few seconds it looked like someone had hit the monitor on the side with a 2x4 and it had gone completely haywire. "Monica?" Jake asked aloud again. "Wrong test again?" she replied. Her voice over the intercom was a bit indistinct. "No, there seems to be some problem with this console. It's displaying random characters. Looks broken. Can you see this in there?" "Everything seems fine from here. Can you try pressing Control and F-3?" Jake pressed the keys to no avail. "It's not working." "I'll try to reset it," Monica said. In a moment the screen went blank. "Mr. Hanson, I think something isn't right. I can't reactivate the terminal. Would you mind waiting until Dr. Ennis comes back?" "Not a problem," Jake said, though in reality he wasn't sure what he was going to tell the executives about where all the funding had gone. "Have you been working with Dr. Ennis long?" "He's my mentor, you could say. I've known him for a long time." "Where did you meet?" "I was working on another project here at Substance when Dr. Ennis noticed me and pulled me over to work on this. It's been very rewarding." Jake considered for a moment, then asked, "What does Stu have going on in here anyway? He wouldn't tell me over the phone, and frankly, I've got to answer for all the money you guys have been spending." Monica paused for a moment, then replied, "It's probably best if Dr. Ennis shows you himself. I'm sure he'll be back shortly." Jake got up from the chair and walked over toward the mirrored window.
