The writing section of a standardized test like the SATs, or the AP Literature test, is the next challenge IBM should take on once their Jeopardy computer has some free time. The standard Turing test is well and good but it can be brute forced, like Chess. Having to defend a position stated in a test or write 1,000 words on what is happening in the pictures is very different. Sure a computer can do very funny MadLibs with nothing but a databases of off color words, but an essay is more that research and grammar, it is style and charisma.
Facts alone rarely sway a reader, that is why they call it persuasive writing not factual writing. Taste is also very subjective, I think that James Joyce’s greatest works are among the most dull and uninspired things ever written, but given that millions are forced to read them every year some one out there must love them. So from the same book you can get multiple, equally valid descriptions, with highly persuasive cases to back them. So not even facts are hard and fast.
So for a computer to have an opinion and write a persuasive essay to back it is the true Turing test. The teacher I had senior year in HS English is who I believe Turing had in mind when he created the interrogator position. If IBM or whoever actually creates such a machine, it would be a revolution; it would also have a decent shot at a cabinet position in most of the world’s governments. It would be the prefect press secretary, never flustered or ineloquent as long as the questions stayed in bounds and CNN didn’t exploit a bug in the program. However, this would only be a learning position, once they add a stump speech module, the ultimate spin doctor would be a prefect head of state.
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