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</o:shapelayout></xml><![endif]--></head><body lang=EN-US link="#0563C1" vlink="#954F72"><div class=WordSection1><p class=MsoNormal>Jon, <o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>In my attempt not to bend this thread I have now created thread chaos. Damn!<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>My problem with the Turing Test Game is that it’s never played honestly. Give me a computer that can glare continuously at it’s opponent for 20 minutes at a time and I will give you a chess-playing computer. Give me a computer than can cough just as its opponent is choosing a card, and I will give you a poker-playing computer. Give me a computer than can frisk about, enticing other computers to join it in the frisking, and I will give you a joyous computer. <o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>Nick <o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>Nicholas Thompson<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>Clark University<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><a href="mailto:ThompNickSon2@gmail.com">ThompNickSon2@gmail.com</a><o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><a href="https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/">https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/</a><o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal> <o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><div style='border:none;border-top:solid #E1E1E1 1.0pt;padding:3.0pt 0in 0in 0in'><p class=MsoNormal><b>From:</b> Friam <friam-bounces@redfish.com> <b>On Behalf Of </b>Jon Zingale<br><b>Sent:</b> Tuesday, July 28, 2020 12:19 PM<br><b>To:</b> friam@redfish.com<br><b>Subject:</b> [FRIAM] GPT-3 and the chinese room<o:p></o:p></p></div><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Verdana",sans-serif;color:#333333'>From my perspective, it is helpful to consider a larger history of the<br>consciousness debate. In what could be considered <i>the beginning of the<br>end</i> of African slavery in the west, natural philosophers would seek to<br>find in the physiology of black men structures to explain their <i>inferiority</i><br>and in some extreme cases their <i>inhumanity</i>. Neal Stephenson, in his <i>Baroque<br>Cycle</i> (~)trilogy, caricatures <i>how embarrassing white people be</i> when in the<br>pursuit of the consciousness question. In the novel, a Nigerian born<br>linguist named Dappa attempts, through the power of words and ideas, to<br>argue for the freedom of enslaved people in the west (circa the 1660s).<br>Meanwhile, many spectators look on and muse about how nearly human Dappa's<br>arguments sound, but ultimately <i>must not be confused</i> with the utterances<br>of a <i>reasoning being</i>. Stephenson highlights the cruelty and tyranny that<br>enterprises like these can create. The Turing test generally reeks of<br>this sort of pursuit. Rather than beginning with the assumption that the<br>other experiences and then wondering what that experience is like, we set up<br>an endless procession of tests which on the one hand we hope will <i>converge</i><br>in the limit to understanding, and which on the other will <i>entertain</i> us<br>in the meantime. The Turing test has appeared to me to be a horrible<br>diversion from the discovery of more promising methodologies. One day,<br>perhaps there will be a construction that passes all acceptable Turing<br>tests, and this day will be a sad day because we will likely still have no<br>answers to our initial investigations regarding what it is to be conscious<br>and what it is to <i>experience as another does</i>. Perhaps, the question will<br>be considered solved for <i>all time</i> and the potential needed to reopen<br>the topic exceedingly expensive. Somewhere, Minsky expressed remorse for<br>how some of his results in the field of AI had managed to close the general<br>AI question for decades, ultimately shifting the pursuit away from the hard<br>question and instead towards the pursuit of novel gadgets. In the spirit<br>of EricC's comments about the distinction of surface tension and PH, if<br>consciousness is a thing, then it should be so whether or not we all agree.<o:p></o:p></span></p></div></div></div></body></html>