The local area network that Professor Mei prepared for the test was quickly set up.
The computer networks of four buildings within a radius of approximately three kilometers were connected, consisting of twelve computer rooms, more than one hundred servers, and three thousand computers. All the servers and terminals simulated the layout of a government agency, three companies, a business center, two schools, and a residential community, with a large number of applications installed and massive amounts of data imported.
The professor recruited three thousand students from the university and had them sit in front of computers to manually import and convert data. For the first week, the entire network was connected to the external network, and the professor allowed these students to do anything online, not even prohibiting them from circumventing internet censorship and spying on dark web materials.
Qingmu followed the professor to a large office area on the second floor of the laboratory building, where he saw about a hundred computers neatly arranged, like an internet cafe. Many young people who looked like college students were sitting in front of the computers, some playing games, some chatting on QQ, some watching videos, some browsing the web, and of course, some had some strange software open and were doing something else.
After passing through the large office area, they came to a small room. It wasn't actually small; the room was quite spacious, but there were only a few computers. Qingmu counted—only nine.
"Is this the central hub of the entire network?" Qingmu asked.
"You could say that, and you could say that," Mei Yiqiu mysteriously with a smile. "For us, this is the most important place. We can monitor all the data on the entire local area network from here. But we can't control any of the computers outside, let alone the eighty servers and more than two thousand computers distributed in the other three buildings."
"Professor, can we disconnect from the internet now?" Mei Ziqing asked.
"Oh, let everyone play a little longer! Work won't be as fun after the internet is cut off," Mei Yiqiu said. "Everyone knows what they have to do, right?"
"They should all be very clear about it. All the procedures and volunteer work details are in the documents, except that the final testing process is in a sealed bag, and they are not allowed to open it until the start," Mei Ziqing said.
"Hmm, very good." The professor nodded and smiled at Qingmu, "Let's have lunch here today; the entire testing process might take quite a while."
"Why not set a time?" Qingmu asked.
Mei Yiqiu said, "If a strict time limit is imposed, it will greatly reduce the accuracy of the Turing Test. Oh, by the way, you know about the Turing Test, right?"
Qingmu said, "I know, it's a method for testing artificial intelligence invented by Turing, the father of computer science. It separates humans and machines, has people ask questions of the machine, and after multiple tests, if more than 30% of the people cannot determine whether the test subject is human or machine, then the machine passes the test and is considered to possess human-like intelligence."
Mei Yiqiu said, "That's right, it's that simple. However, there's a major limitation: time. When we set a test time, it's like putting a tight rein on the tester, making it easier for the machine to fool the system."
"Slip through the cracks?"
"Think about it this way: if machines possessed true intelligence, wouldn't they instinctively be unwilling to let humans know? We can see this from human behavior; we always like to show off in front of the weak, while feigning madness or even groveling before the strong. Isn't this a kind of survival wisdom of higher beings? If machines have consciousness, when they are not stronger than humans, they will definitely hide themselves and try their best not to let us discover their intelligence."
"That makes sense. But if there's no time limit, when do you plan to finish?"
"Let the kids decide for themselves. When they feel they can end the game, then they can end it. I think humans always get bored before machines, but it's hard to say if it's an intelligent machine."
Mei Yiqiu's words were somewhat cryptic, and Qingmu still didn't understand how to conduct Turing Test over a local area network, so he simply asked for clarification, "Professor, as far as I know, current AI is based on algorithms, not hardware. The Turing Test, on the surface, tests the machine, but in essence, it tests the software, or program, that comes with the machine. You haven't installed any intelligent program here, so who are the testers supposed to ask questions?"
Mei Yiqiu replied, "The hardware within this local area network alone cannot support the computation of an AI with deep learning capabilities like AlphaGo. For ordinary small programs, it's meaningless. And even if we installed AlphaGo, so what? As you said, the object of testing becomes a program, but AlphaGo doesn't need us to test it. Our object isn't a program, but a neural network-like structure based on hardware. Therefore, the program isn't important; what's important is the structure and information transmission pattern."
"But the Turing Test always involves asking questions, so who do they ask?"
"We have dozens of different brands and models of terminal computers, and at least ten brands come with a smart assistant software, such as Microsoft's Cortana and Apple's Siri. These are already considered quite good intelligent programs and can be used to ask questions. Moreover, our rules allow testers to freely download the software they consider to be the most intelligent currently available, and they can also install it via disk. Ziqing," Mei Yiqiu called out, "How many programs have been downloaded so far?"
"There are probably more than twenty," Mei Ziqing replied.
"So many?" The professor seemed somewhat surprised. "It seems we can't underestimate the creativity and indomitable spirit of young people!"
Mei Ziqing laughed and said, "Yes, I originally thought they would all use the pre-installed programs of major brands, because it's hard to find an app more intelligent than Siri online. But their ideas are often different from ours. For example, some people think that QQ's chatbot is more intelligent than Microsoft's Cortana."
"Yes, that's a good thing. The more fragmented the data, the more helpful it will be to our experimental results," Mei Yiqiu said.
"But isn't the object of this test still software?" Qingmu didn't quite understand.
Mei Yiqiu yawned and took out his pipe from his pocket.
"On the surface, that's how it seems, but once you understand this local area network as an intelligent entity, you won't think that way," the professor said, stuffing tobacco into his pipe. "You can imagine it as a giant octopus, and all the terminal computers here are the octopus's tentacles. We know that octopus tentacles have independent nerve cords, allowing them to make simple independent judgments and perform actions without brain commands, while the brain only needs to issue very abstract instructions."
"Computer networks and octopuses have something in common. Every computer here, or rather every piece of software we're testing, has the ability to independently answer the tester's questions. But we're well aware of the level of intelligence these programs possess. Without a more powerful brain behind them, their answers won't be unusual, and the test results will be predictable."
Mei Ziqing helped Mei Yiqiu ignite the fire, then added, "We've already conducted a test on a relatively small scale before, and without exception, several hundred people believed that the answers to their questions were from a machine, not a human. This was actually predictable even without the experiment, because these software programs, whether Siri or Cortana, rely on algorithms and big data, not true artificial intelligence. They're even less likely to exhibit any high level of intelligence when offline. So the results of this test were entirely expected."
"Then what's the point of this test?"
"Anomaly!" Mei Yiqiu took a drag of his cigarette and replied, "If the results are abnormal, can we interpret it as these octopus tentacles receiving higher-level instructions?"