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From: minsky@media-lab.media.mit.edu (Marvin Minsky)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: If it does not pass TT it is not intelligent????
Keywords: TT, intelligence
Message-ID: <1991Jun19.050512.27413@news.media.mit.edu>
Date: 19 Jun 91 05:05:12 GMT
References: <8569@awdprime.UUCP> <1991Jun18.220932.22904@news.media.mit.edu> <3727@sirius.ucs.adelaide.edu.au>
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In article <3727@sirius.ucs.adelaide.edu.au> jbaxter@adelphi.physics.adelaide.edu.au.oz.au (Jon Baxter) writes:
>In article <1991Jun18.220932.22904@news.media.mit.edu>
>minsky@media-lab.media.mit.edu (Marvin Minsky) writes:
>
>> Please, Turing never meant the TT to be Necessary for people to
>> recognize something as intelligent.  It was only intended to be a
>> Sufficient condition.  And it was not to define intelligence, but only
>> to propose a situation in which non-critical people would usually agree.
>
>Then what use is the Turing test? Sufficiently non-critical people think
>that Eliza is intelligent, but anyone with computing knowledge would disagree.
>Did Turing really mean for the people in his test to be non-critical?

It isn't any use at all, so far as I know.  Turing was addressing the
problem that people, because they have the word "intelligent", think
there must be a thing that corresponds to it, and they want a
definition that will help them recognize that thing.  So Turing,
observing that they couldn't agree, suggested his "test" as a
sufficent condition: if people couldn't distinguish, over the phone,
between a person and computer X, then they could probably agree that
the computer must be intelligent.

So, yes, he meant for the people to be uncritical.  Do you think Eliza
is more or less intellgient than an ant?  Do you think something is
either intelligent or not?  Shame on you for wasting your intelligence
on such silly matters.  My point is that the "critical" people seem
just as foolish because, in my view, there isn't any such thing as
"intelligence" or "intentionality" of any of those things.  They're
all relative...