The Trolling Test

"How many different automata or moving machines can be made by the industry of man [...] For we can easily understand a machine's being constituted so that it can utter words, and even emit some responses to action on it of a corporeal kind, which brings about a change in its organs; for instance, if touched in a particular part it may ask what we wish to say to it; if in another part it may exclaim that it is being hurt, and so on. But it never happens that it arranges its speech in various ways, in order to reply appropriately to everything that may be said in its presence, as even the lowest type of man can do."

"Descartes, in his discussion of whether animals have minds, argued that the definitive indicator of having a mind (thinking) is the ability to use true language. His idea is that if something talks, then it is reasonable to see it as a thinking being. Descartes was careful to distinguish between what mere automated responses and actual talking."

"This Cartesian approach was explicitly applied to machines by Alan Turing in his Turing test. The idea is that if a person cannot distinguish between a human and a computer by engaging in a natural language conversation via text, then the computer would have passed the Turing test."

"Not surprisingly, technological advances have resulted in computers that can engage in behavior that appears to involve using language in ways that might pass the test. Over a decade ago IBM's Watson won at Jeopardy in 2011 and then upped its game by engaging in debate regarding violence and video games. Since Watson, billions have been poured into AI and some claim that AI models c"

The problem of other minds concerns how knowledge of one’s own mind extends to beliefs about minds in others. It also covers how to determine whether another person’s spoken claims reflect their inner feelings. Descartes proposed that the ability to use true language is a definitive sign of having a mind. He distinguished genuine language use from automated responses by noting that machines can be built to utter words and react to bodily triggers, but cannot arrange speech appropriately to everything said in their presence. Turing applied this idea to machines through a conversational test, where indistinguishability from a human in natural language would indicate passing. Advances in AI have produced systems that appear to use language convincingly, raising questions about whether such behavior indicates minds.

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