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From: sjb@piobe.austin.ibm.com (Scott J Brickner)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: If it does not pass TT it is not intelligent????
Keywords: TT, intelligence
Message-ID: <8569@awdprime.UUCP>
Date: 18 Jun 91 19:43:30 GMT
References: <1991Jun18.110450.24630@jarvis.csri.toronto.edu> <1991Jun17.064232.2536@panix.uucp>
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Would the martians necessarily fail the TT?  I agree that they may not
seem like normal humans, but that doesn't mean that they'd fail the
test... only that it might be somewhat more difficult for them.  This is
much like the arguments that low-income inner-city minority children
perform lower on "intelligence" tests because the tests are biased
against them (i.e. ask questions about material which is not within
their experience).  Consider a TT in which the subject is a moderatly
autistic adult (Raymond from Rain Man?)... I think he should be
considered intelligent, but would clearly be distinguishable from a
"normal human"... by your standards, his distinguishability would mark
him as not even human!

Presumably the tester is going to be putting questions to the subject
which are in some way impossible for a non-intelligent being to respond
sensibly, but to which an intelligent being may (although with some
difficulty) respond.  This sounds like a difficult task, and may
indicate that the TT is itself impossible.  Suppose someone came up with
a "super-eliza" program - one that could handle, say, one thousand times
the range of patterns of the original one (much like a character in
Christopher Stasheff's "King Kobold Revisted").  One could expect it to
perform at least as well as the "martian" or "autistic" subject.  Is it
intelligent?  I think that the original intent of the TT was to exclude
this sort of intelligence, but include all forms of "natural" intelligence.

I think that before we can continue arguments about intelligence, we
need to really evaluate what we MEAN by the term.

Any suggestions?

Scott J Brickner, thinker.