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Yeah I think you make good points. > IMO it's even more meaningless if we attempt to test for these before defining precisely what we mean by these terms, sinc

by bryan0 4y ago

Yeah I think you make good points. > IMO it's even more meaningless if we attempt to test for these before defining precisely what we mean by these terms, since otherwise passing is a subjective measure. This what I think is the beauty of the Turing test because trying to agree on a definition for consciousness, sentience, understanding, etc.. is futile. The Turing test says who cares about those definitions, instead look at whether a computer in general conversation is indistinguishable from a human. Because that’s really what matters.

HarHarVeryFunny 4y ago
Yes, I suppose that's what the Turing test is meant to do - test for intelligence without having to define it, and the implicit definition of ("if it acts intelligent, it is intelligent") is reasonable enough, but I'm really not sure what use it has! It was an interesting thought experiment in 1950 at the beginning of the computer age, but now that we're getting close to actually being able to build intelligent systems, what's the point ?! Artificial intelligence will exist on a spectrum from well-below to well-beyond human, and it'd be useful to have some way to quantify that rather than just be able to say "this one's right around human level!". We really need an "ImageNet for AI" competition that can measure intelligence. I think we can certainly define intelligence (and consciousness too for that matter), even if not everyone is going to agree. Given human nature there'll still be people denying machine intelligence well after they're being managed by machines ! My rough take definition of intelligence is "ability to predict", IOW degree to which an entity can use prior experience to anticipate and plan for the future, with plans unfolding as predicted. Given that the human cortex appears to be literally a prediction machine (learning by prediction failure), this definition seems well matched to the notion of "if it acts human, its intelligent", but it's specific enough that I think one could devise tests requiring different levels of learning (from experience) and prediction to quantify it.
- bryan0 4y ago
  > now that we're getting close to actually being able to build intelligent systems, what's the point ?! What’s the point of going to the moon? It would be a great human achievement and life will never be the same. It also doesn’t need to be binary while machines are attempting to pass it. You still would be able to judge how close computers are getting as the questions in a Turing test get more and more nuanced and sophisticated. That being said we should have more objective tests like you described. No reason we wont do both.
  - HarHarVeryFunny 4y ago
    > What’s the point of going to the moon? It would be a great human achievement and life will never be the same. Well, building a human-level AI will be a tremendous achievement... But choosing to guage whether we've achieved that goal by using a poorly defined subjective test conceived in the 1950's would seem to diminish that by indicating how dumb we actually are! ;-)

by bryan0 4y ago

HarHarVeryFunny 4y ago

Yes, I suppose that's what the Turing test is meant to do - test for intelligence without having to define it, and the implicit definition of ("if it acts intelligent, it is intelligent") is reasonable enough, but I'm really not sure what use it has! It was an interesting thought experiment in 1950 at the beginning of the computer age, but now that we're getting close to actually being able to build intelligent systems, what's the point ?! Artificial intelligence will exist on a spectrum from well-below to well-beyond human, and it'd be useful to have some way to quantify that rather than just be able to say "this one's right around human level!". We really need an "ImageNet for AI" competition that can measure intelligence. I think we can certainly define intelligence (and consciousness too for that matter), even if not everyone is going to agree. Given human nature there'll still be people denying machine intelligence well after they're being managed by machines ! My rough take definition of intelligence is "ability to predict", IOW degree to which an entity can use prior experience to anticipate and plan for the future, with plans unfolding as predicted. Given that the human cortex appears to be literally a prediction machine (learning by prediction failure), this definition seems well matched to the notion of "if it acts human, its intelligent", but it's specific enough that I think one could devise tests requiring different levels of learning (from experience) and prediction to quantify it.

bryan0 4y ago
> now that we're getting close to actually being able to build intelligent systems, what's the point ?! What’s the point of going to the moon? It would be a great human achievement and life will never be the same. It also doesn’t need to be binary while machines are attempting to pass it. You still would be able to judge how close computers are getting as the questions in a Turing test get more and more nuanced and sophisticated. That being said we should have more objective tests like you described. No reason we wont do both.
- HarHarVeryFunny 4y ago
  > What’s the point of going to the moon? It would be a great human achievement and life will never be the same. Well, building a human-level AI will be a tremendous achievement... But choosing to guage whether we've achieved that goal by using a poorly defined subjective test conceived in the 1950's would seem to diminish that by indicating how dumb we actually are! ;-)