Computer pioneer Alan Turing’s remarks in 1950 on the question, “Can machines think?” were misquoted, misinterpreted and morphed into the so-called “Turing Test”. The modern version says if you can’t tell the difference between communicating with a machine and a human, the machine is intelligent. What Turing actually said was that by the year 2000 people would be using words like “thinking” and “intelligent” to describe computers, because interacting with them would be so similar to interacting with people. Computer scientists do not sit down and say alrighty, let’s put this new software to the Turing Test - by Grabthar’s Hammer, it passed! We’ve achieved Artificial Intelligence!
I can’t remember who said this, but somebody said the version of the Turing Test as we all remember it is ridiculous: It’s basically saying that the test of intelligence is “Can a chatbot fool one idiot?”
That’s essentially the media-generated Turing Test, but in truth no such test was ever defined by Alan Turing. For me the modern takeaway is don’t extrapolate anything about reality from memes.
More “can fool the average idiot.”
‘Passing’ isn’t fooling a single participant, but the majority of them beyond statistical chance.
I always saw it more as pragmatism relating to humanity and being possibly extended to machine intelligence by association. When you talk with another person you have no real way of knowing that they are separate conscious entities, intelligent and self aware in the way you perceive yourself to be. But if they talk and act in a way that is suggestive of that then the best and simplest working practice is to assume it. This same practicality should extend to include artificial intelligence as applicable.
Yes I think that’s generally what Alan Turing meant - he was careful not to define what “intelligence” means, and was discussing practical perception of machine behavior.
The Turing Test codified the very real fact that computer AI systems up till a few years ago couldn’t hold a conversation (outside of special conversational tricks like Eliza and Cleverbot). Deep neural networks and the attention mechanism changed the situation; it’s not a completely solved problem, but the improvement is undeniably dramatic. It’s now possible to treat chatbots as a rudimentary research assistant, for example.
It’s just something we have to take in stride, like computers becoming capable of playing Chess or Go. There is no need to get hung up on the word “intelligence”.
Not sure how you define getting “hung up” but there are tons of poorly informed people who believe/fear that AI is about to take over/conquer/destroy/whatever the world because they think LLMs are as smart as humans - or just a few tweaks away. It’s less about the word “intelligence” than about jumping from there to collateral issues, like thinking LLMs are “persons” that deserve rights, that using them without their consent is slavery, and other nonsense. Manipulative people take advantage of this kind of ignorance. Knowledge is good, modern superstition is bad.
Y’all might enjoy reading Blindsight. Really digs into questions of sapience, intelligence, etc. Is it evolutionary cost worth it? I’ve read it 15+ times. Because I’m a psycho.
“You think we’re nothing but a Chinese Room,” Rorschach sneered. “Your mistake, Theseus.”
And suddenly Rorschach snapped into view—no refractory composites, no profiles or simulations in false color. There it was at last, naked even to Human eyes.
Imagine a crown of thorns, twisted, dark and unreflective, grown too thickly tangled to ever rest on any human head. Put it in orbit around a failed star whose own reflected half-light does little more than throw its satellites into silhouette. Occasional bloody highlights glinted like dim embers from its twists and crannies; they only emphasized the darkness everywhere else.
Imagine an artefact that embodies the very notion of torture, something so wrenched and disfigured that even across uncounted lightyears and unimaginable differences in biology and outlook, you can’t help but feel that somehow, the structure itself is in pain.
Now make it the size of a city.
The Turing Test as it is popularly conceptualized is really more of a test of human intelligence (or stupidity, more likely) rather than that of the machine.
If you put a big enough idiot in front of the screen, Dr. Sbaitso could conceivably “pass.” Well, maybe if you muted it, anyway.
Eliza, a chatbot psychiatry emulator written in the 1960s, convinced many people it was a real person.
Various versions of Eliza are online - including this quaint, retro looking one
