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!

  • seven_phone@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    I always saw it more as pragmatism relating to humanity and being possibly extended to machine intelligence by association. When you talk with another person you have no real way of knowing that they are separate conscious entities, intelligent and self aware in the way you perceive yourself to be. But if they talk and act in a way that is suggestive of that then the best and simplest working practice is to assume it. This same practicality should extend to include artificial intelligence as applicable.

    • LovableSidekick@lemmy.worldOP
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      2 days ago

      Yes I think that’s generally what Alan Turing meant - he was careful not to define what “intelligence” means, and was discussing practical perception of machine behavior.