Trust Me?
Consider the following two possible medical scenarios:
Scenario A. Miss Parker wakes up one morning
feeling very much under the weather. She regretfully decides
that a visit to the doctor's would be the order of the day.
However, having been healthy her whole life, the
"doctors" page in her diary is entirely vacant.
Being a resourceful person, Miss Parker phones several of her
friends, all of whom recommend unreservedly a certain Dr.
Jekyll. Miraculously, Miss Parker manages to secure an
appointment, and upon arriving at Dr. Jekyll's office, marked
by an august, gold-lettered doorplate, she is immediately
ushered in by the doctor's kindly nurse, who proceeds to
perform the preliminary examinations. "Don't
worry," says the nurse while going about her business,
"Dr. Jekyll is the best there is." Miss Parker then
enters the inner sanctum and is greeted by Dr. Jekylla
white-coated, silver-haired gentleman of solid build.
"He certainly looks the part," thinks Miss Parker.
Taking the seat proffered by the doctor, she feels entirely
at ease, instinctively knowing she has come to the right
place.
Scenario B. Waking up and feeling ill, Miss
Parker phones city hall and is given the address of a Turing
clinic. Luckily, it is located in a nearby office building.
On arrival, without waiting, she is escorted to an
immaculate, nondescript room that contains only a chair and a
box, the latter of which carries the royal "Turing
Chatterbox" logo. The box wastes no time in identifying
itself as "IQ175" andwhile cheerfully humming
to itselfproceeds to scan Miss Parker with hidden
sensors, printing a diagnostic and a treatment form. At no
time during the silent examination has Miss Parker detected
even a hint of the box's professional medical capacities. Is
it any wonder she cannot help feeling not only ill, but
indeed ill at ease?
If a Turing Chatterbox is to be more than a mere
conversing toy, it must come to be trusted to a degree
commensurate with that of a human being. Why does the human
doctor earn Miss Parker's trust while the Turing
Chatterboxthough apparently equally
"intelligent"does not? "I believe,"
wrote Turing, "that in about 50 years' time it will be
possible to program computers
to make them play the
imitation game so well that an average interrogator will not
have more than 70% chance of making the right identification
after five minutes of questioning." While a five-minute
intelligence test may well exist, would you trust a
five-minute trust test?
As human beings we are part of multitudinous social
networks and continually refine our view on trustworthiness.
A person is judged trustable not merely by his or her
utterances, demeanor, and known actions, but also through the
influence of invisible social networks that "float"
in the backdrop. Witness Miss Parker's attention to her
friends' opinions, the office's doorplate, the doctor's
diploma, the nurse, the doctor's professional attire and
demeanor, all attesting to the character of Dr. Jekyll. We
continually collect signpoststhrough friends,
colleagues, newspapers, books, television, and so
onthat signify the collective confidence placed in each
person and institution with whom we have social dealings. It
is therefore expected that when machines move from the role
of mechanical intermediary (for instance, a telephone or
database program) to that of interlocutor (travel agent,
investment adviser) the trust issue will enter the picture in
a much more explicit way. We argue that when intelligence is
actually put to use it need come hand-in-hand with another
primordial (human) quality: trust.
What happens when a Turing financial
advisor misadvises an investor or when a Turing doctor
mistreats a patient? Can Turing Chatterboxes be held
accountable for their actions?