What about the fact that Clippy displays intelligence at precisely the level of a smart human? Regardless of any technological considerations, it seems vanishingly unlikely to me that any machine intelligence would ever exactly match human capabilities. As soon as machines become capable of human-level performance at any task, they inevitably become far better at it than humans in a very short time. (Can anyone name a single exception to this rule in any area of technology?)
So, unless Clippy has some reason to contrive his writings carefully and duplicitously to look as plausible output of a human, the fact that he comes off as having human-level smarts is conclusive evidence that he indeed is one.
As soon as machines become capable of human-level performance at any task, they inevitably become far better at it than humans in a very short time. (Can anyone name a single exception to this law in any area of technology?)
This may depend on how you define a "very short time" and how you define "human-level performance." The second is very important: Do you mean about the middle of the pack or akin to the very best humans in the skill? If you mean better than the vast majority of humans, then there's a potential counterexample. In ...
Some research says that lurkers make up over 90% of online groups. I suspect that Less Wrong has an even higher percentage of lurkers than other online communities.
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Also see the introduction thread.