alt Hacker NewsTuring test is generally misunderstood, much like Schrodinger's cat, it has devolved in to a pop cultural meme. The test is to evaluate if a machine can think. Not if it is intelligent, not if it is human-like. Its dismissed as a useful by most experts in philosophy of mind, AI, language, etc..
Thinking cool and all but not that extraordinary. Even plants does it.
Replies
"Thinking cool and all but not that extraordinary. Even plants does it."
Are you involved in politics somehow?
I thought that was part of the issue, is the poor understanding of is the test to evaluate if it can think or only if we think it can think. And even that is generalizable since there are different categories of thinking or concepts of the mind.
I like the analogy with Schrödinger’s cat. Like Schrödinger’s cat it is actually not a good thought experiment. Both have been debunked. Schrödinger’s cat is applying quantum behavior (of a single interaction) to a macro system (with trillions of interactions). While the Turing test can be explained away with Searle’s Chinese room thought experiment.
I would argue that Schrödinger’s cat has done more damage to the general understanding of quantum physics then it has done good. In contrary though, I don‘t think the same about the Turing test. I think it has resulted in a net positive for the theory of mind as long as people take Searle’s rebuttal into account. Without it (as is sadly common in popular philosophy) the Turing test is simply just wrong, and offers no good insight for neither philosophy nor science.
> The test is to evaluate if a machine can think.
The test is to showcase that the question of whether machines can think is meaningless. The point of Turing's thesis is that passing his test just proves the machine has the capability to pass such a test, which is actually meaningful.