I wasn't proposing that the Turing Test applied in the case of
_Bladerunner_ though I think the Turing Test is a some way the crux of the
problem and I'm glad someone brought it up. If it looks like a duck and
quacks like a duck, is it the duck? If a computer for all intents and
purposes can strike up a conversation and be indistinguishable from a real
person, is it a person? Does it 'think' (whatever that means)?
It's clear in the case of _Frankenstein_ and _Bladerunner_, that the
author isn't trying to put words in the mouth of some machine. Rather,
just the opposite. In each tale, one character attempts to usurp God's
role, thinks he is creating a 'machination' and not a 'creature' (to
return the debate to the issue of creatureliness that was brought up a few
weeks ago). But he winds up making a creature and makes the mistake of
treating it like a machine, a slave to his will or something worse. We
return to the sentimentality of the gas chambers.
In a broader sense, of course, all characters are dead. They speak
whatever serves the author's intentions. They have no free will. (This
is what makes _Bladerunner_ so interesting for me; it's a struggle for
autonomy). They exist only in our minds and must be recreated... but even
then, an actor's representation is still fleeting, even if fixed and
recorded. There's a sense in which art just counterfeits the natural
world. Dante touched on it when he visited the counterfeiters in hell.
Words on a page are just words - they have to be activated by that third
element in the triad. They have to be given spirit. (Hm. Perhaps this
will spawn a thread on deconstruction...)
The interesting thing wasn't that Kasparov lost. It's how he reacted.
That, for me, was the only human element to the contest. The rest was all
logic (though imperfectly applied). Nature breeds plenty of animals who
understand logic (Skinner's pidgeons come to mind). Chess is a finite
game with a provable outcome (win, lose or draw), though no person yet
knows what it is. That's why we play it. When a computer figures out the
solution, no one will play it anymore, just like tic-tac-toe.
Just a few random thoughts,
Wade Riddick