Facebook develops artificial intelligence test

NEW YORK: Facebook has developed a simple test that can help determine the intelligence level of an artificial intelligence software.

The test, developed by researchers at Facebook's Artificial Intelligence lab, involves 20 tasks, which get progressively harder.

Any potential artificial intelligence (AI) must pass all of them if it is ever to develop true intelligence, researchers said.

Computing pioneer Alan Turing introduced his own test for AI, called The Turing test, in 1950.

In the test a human judge engages in natural language conversations with a human and a machine designed to generate performance indistinguishable from that of a human being.

If the judge cannot tell the machine from the human, the machine is said to have passed the test.

However, this approach has a downside. "The Turing test requires us to teach the machine skills that are not actually useful for us," said Matthew Richardson, an AI researcher at Microsoft.

For instance, to pass the test an AI must learn to lie about its true nature and pretend not to know facts a human would not.

AI researchers everywhere are developing more comprehensive exams to challenge their machines.