Wednesday 11th April 2012, 7-9:30pm.
Inspace, 1 Crichton Street, Edinburgh EH8 9AB

2012 marks the centenary of the birth of Alan Turing, an event being celebrated worldwide.  Turing is regarded by many as the originator of modern computing. The T100 Twittest is a playful project for children (and adults) about intelligence based on the ‘Turing Test’ for artificial intelligence – re-imagined for the social media generation.  We've been running a project with a collection of Scottish secondary schools – testing how intelligence is perceived, transmitted and institutionalised.

In Turing’s imitation game, an interrogator has to decide which other player – A or B – is a computer, and which is a human. To decide, the interrogator can only use responses to their written questions, so Twitter is actually perfect for this kind of test. Some twitterers may not be who they claim to be: student, teacher, Stephen Fry, or software bot?

On T100 night, we'll first be announcing who the winners are at faking and spotting fakers, or at just being themselves. Then, to a background of wartime jazz from the Bill Fleming Quarter, the audience will have the chance to try the game in Twittest, to see who's fooling who. Later on, we'll go behind the scenes to explore what strategies students used to win (or lose) the Test.

For more information visit inspace.ed.ac.uk/latelab

LateLab is a collaboration between the Edinburgh International Science Festival, New Media Scotland and the University of Edinburgh's School of Informatics.

Supported by FuturICT