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Comment by stalfie

7 hours ago

Besides the fact that the subjective criteria needed classify something as "alive" or "thinking" is irrelevant to the point you are replying to, fire doesn't pass the Turing test. That analogy is extremely weak.

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stalfie

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vanderZwan  5 hours ago

The Turing test has been passed for half a century already, and we've been moving goal posts ever since.

The point I was trying to make was this: we've been dealing with autonomous systems that sustain and spread themselves and "act on their own" without our intervention since time immemorial, ranging from lifeless chemical reactions to other humans. Now, the discussion about where exactly AI lies on that spectrum isn't unimportant: suppose we do manage create an artificial mind that "experiences" something, then we are currently on the path to creating a new class of artificial slaves. The ignorance of which is a "fun" bit of cognitive dissonance on the pro-AI side imo (and in general we could have fun with analysing how much the fear of robot/AI uprisings in classical fiction may just be a projection of upper-class fears of an automated worker's class uprising, which would explain a lot of why it's sd US-specific. But that's probably too radical for this particular website).

The point is: it's a lot less important than the fact that no matter what the least-nebulous answer to that question may be, ultimately we humans are creating these systems, running them, enabling them, the depend on us to exist and function, and we are responsible for the consequences of all df that. And we are able to make different choices. And most of the time this discussion about autonomous agency is a wielded as a distraction from that.

  • genxy  5 hours ago

    I am with you. This could spread like fire, doesn't matter if the fire is sentient or not, it still gets you.

  • ben_w  5 hours ago

    While I agree about the importance in this regard:

    > suppose we do manage create an artificial mind that "experiences" something, then we are currently on the path to creating a new class of artificial slaves

    On this, I note that despite humanity being aware of greenhouse gasses for over a century, we only took meaningful steps to reduce our creation of them in the last decade. Our ability to "make different choices" collectively is far more limited than many of us individually would like:

    > ultimately we humans are creating these systems, running them, enabling them, the depend on us to exist and function, and we are responsible for the consequences of all df that. And we are able to make different choices.

    And on this, I must firmly disagree:

    > The Turing test has been passed for half a century already, and we've been moving goal posts ever since.

    No, it hasn't. From that claim, you're obviously talking about ELIZA, and if you think the anecdotes about that count as passing the Turing test, I suggest actually reading what Turing wrote rather than second-hand accounts:

      The new form of the problem can be described in terms of a game which we call the 'imitation game." It is played with three people, a man (A), a woman (B), and an interrogator (C) who may be of either sex. The interrogator stays in a room apart front the other two. The object of the game for the interrogator is to determine which of the other two is the man and which is the woman. He knows them by labels X and Y, and at the end of the game he says either "X is A and Y is B" or "X is B and Y is A." The interrogator is allowed to put questions to A and B thus:

  C: Will X please tell me the length of his or her hair?

  Now suppose X is actually A, then A must answer. It is A's object in the game to try and cause C to make the wrong identification. His answer might therefore be:

  "My hair is shingled, and the longest strands are about nine inches long."

  In order that tones of voice may not help the interrogator the answers should be written, or better still, typewritten. The ideal arrangement is to have a teleprinter communicating between the two rooms. Alternatively the question and answers can be repeated by an intermediary. The object of the game for the third player (B) is to help the interrogator. The best strategy for her is probably to give truthful answers. She can add such things as "I am the woman, don't listen to him!" to her answers, but it will avail nothing as the man can make similar remarks.

  We now ask the question, "What will happen when a machine takes the part of A in this game?" Will the interrogator decide wrongly as often when the game is played like this as he does when the game is played between a man and a woman? These questions replace our original, "Can machines think?"

    and yes, he was over-optimistic on timelines (I assume the 109 is 10^9, this PDF seems to have a few transcription errors):

      I believe that in about fifty years' time it will be possible, to programme computers, with a storage capacity of about 109, to make them play the imitation game so well that an average interrogator will not have more than 70 per cent chance of making the right identification after five minutes of questioning.

    and over-optimistic about if humans would accept this kind of test as a sign of thinking, given the widespread dismissal of LLMs as "stochastic parrots" and similar:

      What would Professor Jefferson say if the sonnet-writing machine was able to answer like this in the viva voce? I do not know whether he would regard the machine as "merely artificially signalling" these answers, but if the answers were as satisfactory and sustained as in the above passage I do not think he would describe it as "an easy contrivance." This phrase is, I think, intended to cover such devices as the inclusion in the machine of a record of someone reading a sonnet, with appropriate switching to turn it on from time to time.

    - https://courses.cs.umbc.edu/471/papers/turing.pdf