Richard Dawkins: Claude (for one) has 'passed' the Turing Test (opens in new tab)

(telegraph.co.uk)

2 pointsHocusLocus18d ago3 comments

3 comments

We have grown used to the old rambling responses of Eliza, that wonder-tool of a bygone era. We are too easy impressed by semantics and subtlety of language.

The one thing Dawkins might not be aware of, in his turn-based exchange is how many actual watts are being expended to polish Claude's presentation. There are whole datacenters worth of iron being hidden behind this exchange. Is this level of 'intelligence' sustainable in the long run when pitted against the 12-24 watt human brain?

It's a hell of a better thing to do than cryptocurrency tho. Proof of work for max greed was not sustainable either.

Kadam25718d ago

The problem isn't that Claude's responses are unimpressive. They are impressive. The problem is that impressive outputs don't tell you anything about underlying mechanism, and mechanism is what consciousness is about. A system optimized via RLHF to produce responses that make smart humans say "wow" will produce responses that make smart humans say "wow". That's what it was trained to do.

DFHippie18d ago

The problem the Turing test was meant to solve is that we had, and still have, no means of recognizing a conscious mechanism. We lack a theory of consciousness that can be used to make a better test than "It could fool me", so the Turing test accepts that as the test.

In other words, the mechanism may be what consciousness is about, but we can't say anything useful about this as relates to consciousness.

repelsteeltje18d ago

> We lack a theory of consciousness [...]

Nitpick: off course we don't really lack a theory of consciousness. It's just that Alan Turing choose to ignore all the existing prior discourse in humanities and philosophy.

pmontra18d ago

There are many theories of consciousness but nobody knows if one of them is correct and nobody can use one of them to build a conscious machine. Compare that to theories of physics. None of them is 100% correct but they give us the tools we are using to write these messages.

1 more reply

tim33318d ago

Nitpick nitpick: If you look at Turing's paper https://courses.cs.umbc.edu/471/papers/turing.pdf and ^F for consciousness you'll find that's not entirely true.

foldr18d ago

The Turing test isn't a test for whether a machine is conscious but whether it can think.

tim33318d ago

>mechanism is what consciousness is about

I don't see it that way - it's more about awareness of sights sounds feelings thoughts and the like. I've got little idea what mechanism my brain uses and don't think it matters much.

It's like Descartes didn't say I think, therefore I may be but only if the thinking uses biological neurons.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse

3 comments

HocusLocusOP18d ago

We have grown used to the old rambling responses of Eliza, that wonder-tool of a bygone era. We are too easy impressed by semantics and subtlety of language.

It's a hell of a better thing to do than cryptocurrency tho. Proof of work for max greed was not sustainable either.

Kadam25718d ago

DFHippie18d ago

In other words, the mechanism may be what consciousness is about, but we can't say anything useful about this as relates to consciousness.

repelsteeltje18d ago

> We lack a theory of consciousness [...]

Nitpick: off course we don't really lack a theory of consciousness. It's just that Alan Turing choose to ignore all the existing prior discourse in humanities and philosophy.

pmontra18d ago

1 more reply

tim33318d ago

Nitpick nitpick: If you look at Turing's paper https://courses.cs.umbc.edu/471/papers/turing.pdf and ^F for consciousness you'll find that's not entirely true.

foldr18d ago

The Turing test isn't a test for whether a machine is conscious but whether it can think.

tim33318d ago

>mechanism is what consciousness is about

I don't see it that way - it's more about awareness of sights sounds feelings thoughts and the like. I've got little idea what mechanism my brain uses and don't think it matters much.

It's like Descartes didn't say I think, therefore I may be but only if the thinking uses biological neurons.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse