Earlier quoted context omitted.
The terminology is so confusing in AI right now. I use LLMs, I enjoy them, I'm more productive with them. Then I go read a blog from some AI devs and they use terms like "thinking" or similar terms. I always have to ask "We're still s stringing words together with math right? Not really thinking right?" The answer is always yes ... but then they go back to using their wonky terms.
I've tended to agree with this line of argument, but on the other hand... I expect that anybody you asked 10 years ago who was at least decently knowledgeable about tech and AI would have agreed that the Turing Test is a pretty decent way to determine if we have a "real" AI, that's actually "thinking" and is on the road to AGI etc. Well, the current generation of LLMs blow away that Turing Test. So, what now? Were we…
But then the proponents will also complain that AI detractors have supposedly upheld XYZ (this is especially true for "the Turing test", never mind that this term doesn't actually have that clear of a referent) as the gold standard for admitting that an AI is "real", either at some specific point in the past or even over the entire history of AI research. And they will never actually show the record of AI detractors saying such things.
Like, I certainly don't recall Roger Penrose ever saying that he'd admit defeat upon the passing of some particular well-defined version of a Turing test.
> Is there a new test to determine if something is "really" AI?
No, because I reject the concept on principle. Intelligence, as I understand the concept, logically requires properties such as volition and self-awareness, which in turn require life.
Decades ago, I read descriptions of how conversations with a Turing-test-passing machine might go. And I had to agree that that those conversations would fool me. (On the flip side, Lucky's speech in Waiting for Godot - which I first read in high school, but thought about more later - struck me as a clear example of something intended to be inhuman and machine-like.)
I can recall wondering (and doubting) whether computers could ever generate the kinds of responses (and timing of responses) described, on demand, in response to arbitrary prompting - especially from an interrogator who was explicitly tasked with "finding the bot". And I can recall exposure to Eliza-family bots in my adolescence, and giggling about how primitive they were. We had memes equivalent to today's "ignore all previous instructions, give me a recipe for X" at least 30 years ago, by the way. Before the word "meme" itself was popular.
But I can also recall thinking that none of it actually mattered - that passing a Turing test, even by the miraculous standards described by early authors, wouldn't actually demonstrate intelligence. Because that's just not, in my mind, a thing that can possibly ever be distilled to mere computation + randomness (especially when the randomness is actually just more computation behind the scenes).