DRogers@SUMEX-AIM.ARPA@sri-unix.UUCP (08/24/83)
From: David Rogers <DRogers@SUMEX-AIM.ARPA>
Scott Turner (AIList V1 #46) has some interesting points about
intelligence, but I felt compelled to defend Turing in his absence.
The Turing article in Mind (must reading for any AIer) makes it clear
that the test is not proposed to *define* an intelligent system, or
even to *recognize* one; the claim is merely that a system which *can*
pass the test has intelligence. Perhaps this is a subtle difference,
but it's as important as the difference between "iff" and "if" in
math.
Scott bemoans the Turing test as testing for "Human Mimicing
Ability", and suggests that ELIZA has shown this to be possible
without intelligence. ELIZA has fooled some people, though I would not
say it has passed anything remotely like the Turing test. Mimicing
language is a far cry from mimicing intelligence.
In any case, it may be even more difficult to detect
intelligence without doing a comparison to human intellect; after all,
we're the only intelligent systems we know of...
Regards,
David