TheOtherDave comments on The flawed Turing test: language, understanding, and partial p-zombies - Less Wrong

11 Post author: Stuart_Armstrong 17 May 2013 02:02PM

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Comment author: bogdanb 17 May 2013 11:22:58PM *  3 points [-]

does the ability to pass for a human correlate with [qualities] which we vaguely describe as "intelligent" or "conscious"[?]

I always thought (and was very convinced in my belief, though I can't seem to think of a reason why now) that the Turing test was explicitly designed as a "sufficient" rather than a "necessary" kind of test. As in, you don't need to pass it to be "human-level", but if you do then you certainly are. (Or, more precisely, as long as we've established we can't tell, then who cares? With a similar sentiment for exactly what it was we're comparing for "human-level": it's something about how smarter we are than monkeys, we're not sure quite what it is, but we can't tell the difference, so you're in.) A brute-force, first-try, upper-bound sort of test.

But I get the feeling from some of the comments that it claims more than that (or maybe doesn't disclaim as much). Am I missing some literature or something?

Comment author: TheOtherDave 18 May 2013 01:43:49AM 1 point [-]

IIRC, Turing introduces the concept in the paper as a sufficient but not necessary condition, as you describe here.