The Trouble with the Turing Test
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Why the Turing Test hasn't been passed yet—and why it's a bad measure of intelligence anyway

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!

  • deranger@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    1·
    22 days ago

    I think the Chinese room argument published in 1980 gives a pretty convincing reason why the Turing test doesn’t demonstrate intelligence.

    The thought experiment starts by placing a computer that can perfectly converse in Chinese in one room, and a human that only knows English in another, with a door separating them. Chinese characters are written and placed on a piece of paper underneath the door, and the computer can reply fluently, slipping the reply underneath the door. The human is then given English instructions which replicate the instructions and function of the computer program to converse in Chinese. The human follows the instructions and the two rooms can perfectly communicate in Chinese, but the human still does not actually understand the characters, merely following instructions to converse. Searle states that both the computer and human are doing identical tasks, following instructions without truly understanding or “thinking”.

    Searle asserts that there is no essential difference between the roles of the computer and the human in the experiment. Each simply follows a program, step-by-step, producing behavior that makes them appear to understand. However, the human would not be able to understand the conversation. Therefore, he argues, it follows that the computer would not be able to understand the conversation either.

    • 8baanknexer@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      21 days ago

      I am sceptical of this thought experiment as it seems to imply that what goes on within the human brain is not computable. For reference: every single physical effect that we have thus far discovered can be computed/simulated on a Turing machine.

      The argument itself is also riddled with vagueness and handwaving: it gives no definition of understanding but presumes it as something that has a definite location, and also it may well be possible that taking the time to run the program inevitably causes understanding of Chinese after even the first word returned. Remember: executing these instructions could take billions of years for the presumably immortal human in the room, and we expect the human to be so thorough that they execute each of the trillions of instructions without error.

      Indeed, the Turing test is insufficient to test for intelligence, but the statement that the Chinese room argument tries to support is much, much stronger than that. It essentially argues that computers can’t be intelligent at all.

    • Blue_Morpho@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      22 days ago

      Searle argued from his personal truth that a mystic soul is responsible for sapience.

      His argument against a computer system having consciousness is this:

      " In order for this reply to be remotely plausible, one must take it for granted that consciousness can be the product of an information processing “system”, and does not require anything resembling the actual biology of the brain."

      -Searle

      https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_room