The Trouble with the Turing Test
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Why the Turing Test hasn't been passed yet—and why it's a bad measure of intelligence anyway

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!

  • shalafi@lemmy.worldEnglish
    01·
    6 days ago

    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.