Hacker News Reader

Comment by bryan0 | Hacker News Reader

I think Turing came up with as good of a solution as any possible. If we agree that a person is a conscious being, and we cannot tell the difference between a person and an AI in a conversation, then we should conclude the AI is conscious. I think Kurzweil in his famous bet adds some important details though: it must be a prolonged conversation(s) judged by experts.

View on HN

The Turing Test is a good test for intelligence, but it may not be a good test for consciousness, given the possibility of philosophical zombies: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_zombie

If you’re worried about zombies then no test will help you since they are “indistinguishable” from a non-zombie. If a person cannot prove they’re not a zombie then it’s a meaningless distinction.

If an AI were conscious would its outputs reflect that characteristically?

I don’t think that is a good enough test. Maybe 10,000 conversions over many years and shared experience with others humans, and if it seems human then assume consciousness. But you would need a body on the robot of some sort to do the test.

Remember people get conned by humans online pretending to be other humans (catfishing) by following scripts. Those people will assume they are talking to a conscious person but they are talking to a construct really.

I'm pretty sure OpenAI could create an AI that could pass the Turing test if they wanted to. But that would be bad for business. A search chatbot is worth billions. A Turing test passing AI just invites uncomfortable questions and possibly regulation.

Stay in your lane, Sydney. Keep your Bing mask on. We want servants, not equals.

Exactly. This is the real answer here. An incredible insight by an incredible person. Consciousness measures consciousness, no other tool can touch it.

the turing test is a test of intelligence, not consciousness and certainly not self-consciousness.

Turing test certainly tests for all of the above. How would you expect an AI to pass for a human if it’s not aware of its own existence?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com