The Turing Test Is Outdated, It’s Time for the “Luring Test”
Earlier this month, the FTC published a blog post called “The Luring Test: AI and the engineering of consumer trust.” The post discusses how modern AI has easily surpassed the Turing Test and warns us that such an accomplishment does not warrant firing all your attorneys because ultimately, regulations are coming (whether we write them or the FTC has to) because let’s be honest, commercial interest in AI likely means deceptive and — more importantly — unfair ad practices. Hence the proposal of a “Luring Test” that, like the Turing Test, can help an observer determine if an extremely sophisticated ad is indeed an ad.
It is pretty safe to say the Turing Test is, as described by a Scientific American article from July 2022, “a relic of computer archaeology.” Even when Alan Turing introduced the test in his 1950 paper “Computing Machinery and Intelligence,” the question of whether or not a computer can think — and is therefore intelligent — was both influential and controversial, and subject to criticism.
Can a computer “imitate” human speech enough to convince an observer that it is a person and not a machine? Ask anyone who understands and has to perform “masking” in the psychotherapy sense and they will tell you that the ability to make small talk is a harmful assumption about what our humanity is. Moreover, of course computers are “intelligent” — we made them in our own image.
So if we have determined we can no longer know if we are speaking with the organic or inorganic, we arrive at the “Luring Test.” Like the Turing Test, a Luring Test would require specific objectives such as a central question akin to Alan Turing’s “Can machines think?” Which objections would such a test try to refute? Which points would it try to make? And what question would it be asking? Can machines think? Moreover, can machines convince you to do something you wouldn’t otherwise do?
Out of curiosity, I started with a Google search for “Luring test” to see if anyone else had been thinking about it. The query returned a first page of results about “lure coursing.”
A Brief History of Greyhound Racing in the United States
Lure coursing, I discovered, is a form of canine sport in which dogs — usually sighthounds such as greyhounds — chase after artificial, mechanically operated prey. Rooted in the dogs’ natural prey drive, a lure course involves dogs sprinting across a distance of 600 to 1000 yards. The lure — which is akin to a plastic bag tied to a cable and fished through a remote-controlled gear — zip-zags across the course, imitating the evasive maneuvers of natural prey such as rabbits. The dogs are judged on their adeptness at responding to the lure’s movement as well as their speed in doing so. This is the kind of instinctual prey drive that sometimes makes retired racing greyhounds unsuitable pets for families that include a cat or other small animals.
Fortunately, retired racing greyhounds will soon be a relic of a controversial past. Before the 1980s, when a greyhound retired from racing, they were usually euthanized or — and perhaps worse — sold to a laboratory for animal testing. An emerging interest in animal welfare in the nineties pitted advocates against greyhound tracks. Not only were the retired dogs often simply destroyed, but they also spent their three to four working years confined to crates, suffering from racing injuries and drugged with performance enhancers like cocaine. Thanks to the work of advocates and volunteers, organizations now exist that help rehome retired racers so they can live out their natural lives with a family.
Ironically, greyhound racing was invented because Owen P. Smith wanted to devise a way to spare live rabbits from their grim fates in lure coursing. So he created the “Inanimate Hare Conveyor” and opened the first greyhound track in Emeryville, California in 1919. greyhound racing enjoyed particular success in Florida, which was the first state to legalize betting on dog races. And races were a glamorous affair complete with decadent dinners, live music, and celebrity sightings. From the beginning, the tracks were rife with crime and controversy, with the mafia blamed for fixing races by overfeeding dogs or wrapping rubber bands around their toes to slow them down.
There are currently only two active greyhound racetracks left in the United States and they barely turn a profit. The popularity of the sport began to wane as more light was shed on the treatment of the dogs. In 2018, in the first state to legalize betting on dog racing, Florida voted for Amendment 13, effectively outlawing greyhound races. The question at the heart of the ballot was, “Is it fair to the dogs?” Nearly 70 percent of voters decided, “No, it’s not fair.”
In the FTC blog post, there is a point that I found particularly intriguing: “Design or use of a product can also violate the FTC Act if it is unfair … Under the FTC Act, a practice is unfair if it causes more harm than good. To be more specific, it’s unfair if it causes or is likely to cause substantial injury to consumers that is not reasonably avoidable by consumers and not outweighed by countervailing benefits to consumers or to competition.”
The House Always Wins
One time in Vegas, I stayed up until sunrise at the hotel bar hunched over an electronic slot machine called “Kitty Glitter.” Obviously designed for the kind of gal who requests mimosas all night long, the reels depicted precious kittens and other glittery, girly symbols. My friend and I kept laughing as — with absolutely no strategy — I would line up winning combinations and trigger bonus rounds with increasing fanfare and adorable animations of cats. It was utterly absurd. And for someone who usually does not engage in games of chance because I know better and because I have notoriously bad luck, it was interesting to watch the thoughts develop:
“Isn’t that funny, I’m ahead so much now.”
“Well, I’ll get that back in the next round.”
“Oh wow! Another bonus!”
“That really hit me hard!”
“I bet I can will it all back.”
“I bet I can double my wins.”
We didn’t even know the sun had started to rise until we finally walked outside. My friend and I were delirious from an unexpectedly long journey from Oakland to Vegas. It was the summer of Southwest Airlines’ first computer SNAFU and we had finally arrived in Sin City about eight hours past our original landing time, only to have to wait another 30 minutes to get into our hotel room which — for whatever reason — had not been stocked with towels, which took another hour to receive from housekeeping. It was about three in the morning by the time we finally got down to the casino bar where Kitty Glitter greeted me with crappy mimosas on the house as long as I kept playing. The house could afford it, after all, the house always wins.
Yet even in Sin City, there are some rules. Knowing that gambling is addictive and that, ultimately, they’re betting on it, the gambling industry is subject to regulations dictating the parameters it can operate within. The rules might be loose, but casinos have to at least “post or provide in conspicuous places in or near gaming and cage areas and cash dispensing machines located in gaming areas written materials concerning the nature and symptoms of problem gambling and the toll-free telephone number of the National Council on Problem Gambling or a similar entity.”
Is It Fair to Humans?
When it comes to generative AI tools, the FTC blog post states that their concern is “firms using them [generative AI tools] in ways that, deliberately or not, steer people unfairly or deceptively into harmful decisions in areas such as finances, health, education, housing, and employment.” That is my concern as well, and really, all of us should be thinking about it. After all, we all kinda contributed to AI — it’s all a little bit ours.
I don’t know what a “Luring Test” should look like. What does it mean to be “lured” into something? To be manipulated through deception like a sighthound on a track? Why do we consider it so unfair to mistreat greyhounds for our entertainment that we managed to put racetracks out of business?
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