alt Hacker NewsYou’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.
1. Not true. People have been trying to analyze whether mechanical/formal processes can "think" since at least 18th century. E.g. Leibniz wrote:
> if we could find characters or signs appropriate for expressing all our thoughts as definitely and as exactly as arithmetic expresses numbers or geometric analysis expresses lines, we could in all subjects in so far as they are amenable to reasoning accomplish what is done in arithmetic and geometry
2. You're missing the fact that meaning of words is defined through their use. It's an obvious fact that if people call certain phenomenon "thinking" then they call that "thinking".
3. The normal process is to introduce more specific terms and keep more general terms general. E.g. people doing psychometrics were not satisfied with "thinking", so they introduced e.g. "fluid intelligence" and "crystallized intelligence" as different kinds of abilities. They didn't have to redefine what "thinking" means.