this post was submitted on 11 Jan 2025
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The Turing Test, enshrined by the public and media as THE test of machine intelligence, really isn't. (www.thenewatlantis.com)
submitted 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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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!

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 4 days ago

This is the book that introduced me to the Chinese Room thought experiment and is the first thing I began to think of when the recent AI trend started to make a splash.

Peter Watts is great and though it's not related to the topic at hand, I cannot recommend Starfish enough. Dark, haunting, and psychological. (It's apparently part of a series but I never carried on)

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 days ago

Glad to see mentions to Peter Watts. His view of humanity is dry and take on real world is even grimmer, but it's intriguing and backed by science. Also I'm the one of people dying to know what he said at the end of his lecture.