The Turing test
May 26th, 2004
Another complaint about spam. I've been pondering the spam issue under the shower the other day. What we have to do to stop spam, is to select which messages come from humans and which come from machines. Does this ring any bells?
It's the sad truth: we are getting better and better at passing the Turing test. 20 years ago, this was the ultimate dream of everybody even remotely related to IT, including me. As of today, it is our worst nightmare. "Images with foggy text", as one commenter to Matthew suggests, won't help us much longer either, since academics are researching to solve that problem, too. Their goal is, for example, to scan and interpret old manuscripts automatically. A very nobel goal, but the means can be used for spamming as well.
Every tool can be used as a weapon.
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