Facing the Humanities Without the Human: Technological Advances in Creativity

In 1950, the mathematician and computer scientist Alan Turing proposed that, given the difficulty of objectively comparing human and machine intelligence, since the processes employed by each differ substantially, a subjective test could be used to compare perceptions. An observer behind a partition could listen to two participants in a conversation, one human, one machine, and if the observer could not tell the difference between the two, the machine would be deemed to have passed what was then called the imitation test and is now known as the Turing Test. Seventy-six years later, anyone with a cell phone or a computer has instant, free access to AI services that can mimic human speech, writing, graphic art, and music. With inexpensive, easily accessible equipment, human voices can be made to sound like machines, and machines can speak with human-like voices. A user can even record his or her own voice and upload it, and the computer will sample it to overdub the vocal part of any song. To see if people can distinguish between human- and computer-produced songs, we conducted a survey at the University of Maribor, Slovenia and Constantine the Philosopher University, Nitra, Slovakia with a musical version of the Turing Test.