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About the whole "machines can think" debate, I love this quote by EWD: "Alan M. Turing thought about criteria to settle the question of whether Machines Can Th

About the whole "machines can think" debate, I love this quote by EWD: "Alan M. Turing thought about criteria to settle the question of whether Machines Can Think, a question of which we now know that it is about as relevant as the question of whether Submarines Can Swim." (http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD08xx/EWD898.html http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD08xx/EW...) Let's not fall prey to the temptation of thinking: Turing believes machines think Society acted terribly towards Turing Therefore machines do think. EDIT: formatting.

gohrt 13y ago
Turing thought they think And he suffered terribly Therefore they do think
mikeash 13y ago
It seems obvious now that: Turing was a machine Turing could think Therefore machines can think Of course, whether Turing machines can think is still more of an open question, although it seems unlikely that the human brain is doing anything a Turing machine can't simulate, at least in theory.
jlgreco 13y ago
I prefer "Can planes fly?" The Church-Turing-Deutsch Principle seems pretty uncontroversial when we ignore quantum mechanics (and remains questionable when it is considered). Add to this the lack of any evidence for any irreducible quantum requirements in the mind anyway and it seems pretty damn likely that the mind is algorithmic. Even if the CTD Principle does not hold for whatever reason, that still does not put the mind and machines on different levels. It would merely imply that machines more powerful than Turing machines can be built (the mind being an example of such a machine). Not even Roger Penrose disputes a materialistic mind.
dokem 13y ago
I don't think anyone is 'falling prey' because of what happend to Turing. What evidence is there for this?
- pfedor 13y ago
  For example, consider this blog post: http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=63 http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=63 Now ask yourself: how on Earth did the author consider the information about Turing's persecution relevant to the subject at hand?
Tloewald 13y ago
Turing in fact dismisses the question in the famous letter. The Turing test isn't proposed as a test of whether machines can "think" but a test of whether they can imitate a person. Turing considered the question of whether machines could think as being "too meaningless to deserve discussion". http://books.google.com/books?id=CEMYUU_HFMAC&pg=PA317&lpg=PA317&dq=turing+test+chomsky&source=bl&ots=dNkaRT24fG&sig=6I-Kx8yVpAg277E5Ayhc3-ksEQI&hl=en&sa=X&ei=LIWyUb_bB6uh4APg5oH4DA&ved=0CDgQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=turing%20test%20chomsky&f=false http://books.google.com/books?id=CEMYUU_HFMAC&pg=PA317&lpg=P... Also http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/turing-test&#x2F http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/turing-test/ Sorry this links quote Turing, I couldn't find the original source.
- pfedor 13y ago
  So while we're at that, how do the proponents of Turing test respond to the lookup table argument? Say I make a giant lookup table, with keys being all possible conversation prefixes and values being the answers. E.g., h["Hi"] = "Hi.". h["Hi. / Hi. / How are you?"] = "I'm OK, how are you?" etc. Sure the lookup table would be big but definitely finite, since its size is bounded by the maximum possible length of a Turing test conversation (which is at most the length of a human life--we would like humans to pass the test, right?) Will we be morally obligated to grant such hash table the same rights a person enjoys?
  - jerf 13y ago
    http://www.scottaaronson.com/papers/philos.pdf http://www.scottaaronson.com/papers/philos.pdf , section 4. I consider that to be essentially the final word on the topic; it is an objective, mathematically, philosophically, physically meaningful distinction drawn between a lookup table and a computing machine.
    - pfedor 13y ago
      Thanks for the link. I just read section 4 and I don't really see how it addresses the argument. It mostly seems to argue against the opinion that computer programs cannot be sentient. My point is much weaker: that it is manifestly absurd to insist that all computer programs which can pass the Turing test must be presumed sentient. The article acknowledges that a lookup table could pass the Turing test--the author even uses this argument for his own ends. At the same time, clearly he doesn't think we should presume the lookup table sentient. The only passage which might be interpreted as an "objective distinction" is this one: Personally, I ﬁnd this response to Searle extremely interesting—since if correct, it suggests that the distinction between polynomial and exponential complexity has metaphysical signiﬁcance. According to this response, an exponential-sized lookup table that passed the Turing Test would not be sentient (or conscious, intelligent, self-aware, etc.), but a polynomially-bounded program with exactly the same input/output behavior would be sentient. Furthermore, the latter program would be sentient because it was polynomially-bounded. And yet in the next paragraph the author says he's reluctant to stand behind such thesis. Do you, unlike Scott Aaronson, want to adopt this amended postulate--i.e., do you believe all computer programs which can pass the Turing test should be granted personhood as long as they scale polynomially with the length of the conversation?
tel 13y ago
I didn't interpret EWD that way. It's not that machines don't think, but instead that 'think' is too ill-defined to be meaningful in the same sentence as 'machines'. Turing wasn't wrong to believe what he did, but perhaps at that point in time 'machines' did not mean something so precise as it does today.

gohrt 13y ago

Turing thought they think And he suffered terribly Therefore they do think

mikeash 13y ago

It seems obvious now that: Turing was a machine Turing could think Therefore machines can think Of course, whether Turing machines can think is still more of an open question, although it seems unlikely that the human brain is doing anything a Turing machine can't simulate, at least in theory.

jlgreco 13y ago

I prefer "Can planes fly?" The Church-Turing-Deutsch Principle seems pretty uncontroversial when we ignore quantum mechanics (and remains questionable when it is considered). Add to this the lack of any evidence for any irreducible quantum requirements in the mind anyway and it seems pretty damn likely that the mind is algorithmic. Even if the CTD Principle does not hold for whatever reason, that still does not put the mind and machines on different levels. It would merely imply that machines more powerful than Turing machines can be built (the mind being an example of such a machine). Not even Roger Penrose disputes a materialistic mind.

dokem 13y ago

I don't think anyone is 'falling prey' because of what happend to Turing. What evidence is there for this?

pfedor 13y ago
For example, consider this blog post: http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=63 http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=63 Now ask yourself: how on Earth did the author consider the information about Turing's persecution relevant to the subject at hand?

Tloewald 13y ago

Turing in fact dismisses the question in the famous letter. The Turing test isn't proposed as a test of whether machines can "think" but a test of whether they can imitate a person. Turing considered the question of whether machines could think as being "too meaningless to deserve discussion". http://books.google.com/books?id=CEMYUU_HFMAC&pg=PA317&lpg=PA317&dq=turing+test+chomsky&source=bl&ots=dNkaRT24fG&sig=6I-Kx8yVpAg277E5Ayhc3-ksEQI&hl=en&sa=X&ei=LIWyUb_bB6uh4APg5oH4DA&ved=0CDgQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=turing%20test%20chomsky&f=false http://books.google.com/books?id=CEMYUU_HFMAC&pg=PA317&lpg=P... Also http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/turing-test&#x2F http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/turing-test/ Sorry this links quote Turing, I couldn't find the original source.

pfedor 13y ago
So while we're at that, how do the proponents of Turing test respond to the lookup table argument? Say I make a giant lookup table, with keys being all possible conversation prefixes and values being the answers. E.g., h["Hi"] = "Hi.". h["Hi. / Hi. / How are you?"] = "I'm OK, how are you?" etc. Sure the lookup table would be big but definitely finite, since its size is bounded by the maximum possible length of a Turing test conversation (which is at most the length of a human life--we would like humans to pass the test, right?) Will we be morally obligated to grant such hash table the same rights a person enjoys?
- jerf 13y ago
  http://www.scottaaronson.com/papers/philos.pdf http://www.scottaaronson.com/papers/philos.pdf , section 4. I consider that to be essentially the final word on the topic; it is an objective, mathematically, philosophically, physically meaningful distinction drawn between a lookup table and a computing machine.
  - pfedor 13y ago
    Thanks for the link. I just read section 4 and I don't really see how it addresses the argument. It mostly seems to argue against the opinion that computer programs cannot be sentient. My point is much weaker: that it is manifestly absurd to insist that all computer programs which can pass the Turing test must be presumed sentient. The article acknowledges that a lookup table could pass the Turing test--the author even uses this argument for his own ends. At the same time, clearly he doesn't think we should presume the lookup table sentient. The only passage which might be interpreted as an "objective distinction" is this one: Personally, I ﬁnd this response to Searle extremely interesting—since if correct, it suggests that the distinction between polynomial and exponential complexity has metaphysical signiﬁcance. According to this response, an exponential-sized lookup table that passed the Turing Test would not be sentient (or conscious, intelligent, self-aware, etc.), but a polynomially-bounded program with exactly the same input/output behavior would be sentient. Furthermore, the latter program would be sentient because it was polynomially-bounded. And yet in the next paragraph the author says he's reluctant to stand behind such thesis. Do you, unlike Scott Aaronson, want to adopt this amended postulate--i.e., do you believe all computer programs which can pass the Turing test should be granted personhood as long as they scale polynomially with the length of the conversation?

tel 13y ago

I didn't interpret EWD that way. It's not that machines don't think, but instead that 'think' is too ill-defined to be meaningful in the same sentence as 'machines'. Turing wasn't wrong to believe what he did, but perhaps at that point in time 'machines' did not mean something so precise as it does today.