The Most Human Human (Brian Christian)

This is the story of the Loebner Prize, a real-life Turing test competition in which various computer systems compete against actual humans to prove they can converse just like a person. A team of judges have 7-minute instant-message type conversations with others and have to vote for which ones they think are humans and which ones are computer programs. Each year the program that gets the most human votes wins the prize for Most Human Computer - and the human who gets the most human votes wins Most Human Human. The author of the book, who has degrees in both computer science and poetry (!), competed in 2009 and was determined to be voted the Most Human Human. In this book he wanders through a delightful landscape of concepts related to what makes someone human, and how you can tell. He talks about computer chess (of course), pick-up lines, information theory, Zen, compression, and inattentional blindness, among many other topics. I was constantly sharing nuggets of fascination with others. Very much recommended, especially for the nerdy among us.