Turing Learning Means Machines Don't Need Our Help

futurity |  Researchers working with swarm robots say it is now possible for machines to learn how natural or artificial systems work by observing them—without being told what to look for.

This could lead to advances in how machines infer knowledge and use it to detect behaviors and abnormalities.

“Unlike in the original Turing test, however, our interrogators are not human but rather computer programs that learn by themselves.”

The technology could improve security applications, such as lie detection or identity verification, and make computer gaming more realistic.

It also means machines are able to predict, among other things, how people and other living things behave.

The discovery, published in the journal Swarm Intelligence, takes inspiration from the work of pioneering computer scientist Alan Turing, who proposed a test, which a machine could pass if it behaved indistinguishably from a human. In this test, an interrogator exchanges messages with two players in a different room: one human, the other a machine.