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Table 1: Sample items from the BEM Sex Role Inventory
The so-called "Turing Test" for Artificial Intelligence was first proposed by Alan Turing nearly 46 years ago in
[Turing, 1950). The popular notion of this test is that a 'user' (sic) types questions which are responded to via
screen display by either another person or software programmed to fool the user into thinking it is a person.
Software which achieves this is said to pass the Turing Test for Artificial Intelligence. Turing actually
sidestepped the question "Can machines think?" by proposing what he called the "imitation game" which
anticipates by some 40 years the gender crossing behavior of habitues of Internet chat groups(documented by
writers such as Kevin Kelly and others).
GENDERBENDER is not intended to be a literal implementation of Turing's “Imitation game". Rather it uses
Turing's proposal of three way interaction as a way to structure the two player game and then restricts the
questions to the 60 items from the BEM Sex Role Inventory. It is instructive to quote at length a portion of
Turing's original prescription for "the imitation game".
"The new form of the problem can be described in terms of a game which we call the 'imitation game'. It is
played with three people, a man (A), a woman (B), and an interrogator (C) who may be of either sex. The
interrogator stays in a room apart from the other two. The object of the game for the interrogator is to
determine which of the other two is the man and which is the woman. He knows them by labels X and Y, and
at the end of the game he says either 'X is A and Y is B' or 'X is B and Y is A'. The interrogator is allowed to
put questions to A and B thus:"
"C: Will X please tell me the length of his or her hair? Now suppose X is actually A, the A must answer. It is
A's object in the game to try and cause C to make the wrong identification. His answer might therefore be: 'My
hair is shingled, and the longest strands are about nine inches long.' In order that tones of voice may not help
the interrogator the answers should be written, or better still, typewritten,. The ideal arrangement is to have a
teleprinter communicating between the two rooms. Alternatively the question and answers can be repeated by
an intermediary. The object of the game for the third play (B) is to help the interrogator. the best strategy for
her is probably to give truthful answers. She can add such things as "I am the woman, don't listen to him!' to
her answers, but it will avail nothing as the man can make similar remarks."
"We now ask the question, 'What will happen when a machine takes the part of A in this game?' Will the
interrogator decide wrongly as often when the game is played like this as he does the when the game is played
between a man and a woman? These questions replace our original, 'Can machines think?' "
Perhaps the real question is 'Can humans think--critically?' When personality traits become reduced to and
locked in algorithmic descriptions those chosen traits almost inevitably reflect the biases and clichs of what is
considered 'normal.' Moreover the BSRI of 1974 is a kind of time capsule giving insight into how mutable
notions of gender really are. This lends credence to the politically correct view that "gender is a constructed
cultural artifact". The potential for misuse by health care professionals of such psychological instruments are
considerable. The obvious example is the pejorative label of androgynous i.e. does not conform to the binary
either or opposition of male or female sex. Having a mixture of gender traits does not conform to this
dichotomy and therefore must be considered abnormal requiring corrective therapy. Woe to those deviant inbetweens.
Alan Turing himself suffered from this law of the excluded middle having been persecuted and imprisoned
under homophobic laws in Great Britain which may have led to his suicide in the fifties. Ironically he perhaps
as much as any one individual contributed to the success of the Allies over Nazi Germany as he is often
credited with cracking the code of the Enigma Machine used to encrypt messages of the Nazi U-Boat
command. An apocryphal account suggests that at the time he wrote of the "imitation game" he was
undergoing forced hormonal therapy and was sprouting breasts. Under the circumstances he was no doubt
acutely aware of the advantages of narrow band communication.
References
[Lenney 1986] Lenney, Ellen, (1986) Sex Roles, 11, 582-588