Comment by dpark

I must have missed your earlier link.

Eliza did not disprove the Turing test, though. What it showed is that it’s easy to pass a very scoped test that doesn’t allow the user to actually broach general topics. Anyone communicating with Eliza for general conversation should quickly discover that it’s running a script. Just “What time is it?” breaks the script.

The Turing test was never that a computer could convincingly simulate a human convincingly in a very narrowly scoped scenario. Certainly the Eliza effect is interesting because it shows that people can assume emotion where it doesn’t exist (they do the same for other humans, by the way), but it does not disprove the Turing test.

> Any computer scientist who takes it seriously should be deeply embarrassed because they are spouting sci-fi adjacent nonsense, not actual science.

This sentiment seems to be expressed a lot from people who want to insist machines can’t be conscious. This retreat to shaming those who disagree is a tacit admission of a weak position.

Convince with logic and facts if you have them.