alt Hacker NewsPeople have been trying to understand the nature of thinking for thousands of years. That's how we got logic, math, concepts of inductive/deductive/abductive reasoning, philosophy of science, etc. There were people who spent their entire careers trying to understand the nature of thinking.
The idea that we shouldn't use the word until further clarification is rather hilarious. Let's wait hundred years until somebody defines it?
It's not how words work. People might introduce more specific terms, of course. But the word already means what we think it means.
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> But the word already means what we think it means.
But that word can mean different things to different people. With no definition, how can you even begin to have a discussion around something?
You’re mixing and missing a few things here.
1. All previous discussion of thinking was in nature to human and animal minds. The reason this is a question in the first place right now is because we ostensibly have a new thing which looks like a human mind but isn’t. That’s the question at hand here.
2. The question in this particular topic is not about technological “progress” or anything like it. It’s about determining whether machines can think, or if they are doing something else.
3. There are absolutely instances in which the previous word doesn’t quite fit the new development. We don’t say that submarines are swimming like a fish or sailing like a boat. To suggest that “no, actually they are just swimming” is pretty inadequate if you’re trying to actually describe the new phenomenon. AIs and thinking seem like an analogous situation to me. They may be moving through the water just like fish or boats, but there is obviously a new phenomenon happening.