I PROPOSE to consider the question, ‘Can machines think?’ This should begin with definitions of the meaning of the terms 'machine 'and ‘think’. The definitions might be framed so as to reflect so far as possible the normal use of the words, but this attitude is dangerous. If the meaning of the words ‘machine’ and 'think 'are to be found by examining how they are commonly used it is difficult to escape the conclusion that the meaning and the answer to the question, ‘Can machines think?’ is to be sought in a statistical survey such as a Gallup poll. But this is absurd. Instead of attempting such a definition I shall replace the question by another, which is closely related to it and is expressed in relatively unambiguous words.
In other words what’s Turing is saying is “who cares if they think? Focus on their behaviour dammit, do they behave intelligently?”. And consciousness is intrinsically tied to thinking, so… yeah.
But what does it mean to behave intelligently? Cleary it’s not enough to simply have the ability to string together coherent sentences, regardless of complexity, because I’d say the current crop of LLMs has solved that one quite well. Yet their behavior clearly isn’t all that intelligent, because they will often either misinterpret the question or even make up complete nonsense. And perhaps that’s still good enough in order to fool over half of the population, which might be good enough to prove “intelligence” in a statistical sense, but all you gotta do is try to have a conversation that involves feelings or requires coming up with a genuine insight in order to see that you’re just talking to a machine after all.
Basically, current LLMs kinda feel like you’re talking to an intelligent but extremely autistic human being that is incapable or afraid to take any sort of moral or emotional position at all.
Nah. Turing skipped this matter altogether. In fact, it’s the main point of the Turing test aka imitation game:
In other words what’s Turing is saying is “who cares if they think? Focus on their behaviour dammit, do they behave intelligently?”. And consciousness is intrinsically tied to thinking, so… yeah.
But what does it mean to behave intelligently? Cleary it’s not enough to simply have the ability to string together coherent sentences, regardless of complexity, because I’d say the current crop of LLMs has solved that one quite well. Yet their behavior clearly isn’t all that intelligent, because they will often either misinterpret the question or even make up complete nonsense. And perhaps that’s still good enough in order to fool over half of the population, which might be good enough to prove “intelligence” in a statistical sense, but all you gotta do is try to have a conversation that involves feelings or requires coming up with a genuine insight in order to see that you’re just talking to a machine after all.
Basically, current LLMs kinda feel like you’re talking to an intelligent but extremely autistic human being that is incapable or afraid to take any sort of moral or emotional position at all.