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  • Essay / Alan Turing's view on artificial intelligence

    “Can machines think? » This is the question that Alan Turing seeks to address in his article “Computing Machinery and Intelligence”. Because defining "machine" and "thinking" would be an arduous and probably unproductive process, he designed a simple game he called the "imitation game" and then adapted this game into something, now commonly called the "Turing test." ", that I will describe and evaluate this test in terms of its ability to answer, or more precisely replace, the question "can machines think", objections to the validity of the test, as well as my own opinion on the Turing test.Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why violent video games should not be banned”? Get an original essay Turing began with the idea of ​​a simple imitation game in which there are three participants: the interrogator, a man and a woman. It is the job of the interrogator, who can be of either gender, to guess which one is the woman; the woman's job is to make the interrogator believe that she is the woman. woman, and ultimately the man's job is to fool the interrogator into thinking he is the woman. Both the man and the woman may lie, and measures are taken to prevent the interrogator from receiving audio or visual cues, such as transferring all messages via a computer or typewriter. Later, Turing evolved this game by replacing one of the participants with a machine and changing the questioner's goal to guess which participant is the machine. This development ultimately becomes the “Turing test”. Turing states that if an interrogator cannot pass this test accurately, successfully choosing which participant is human, then the machine has proven its ability to "think." Turing thinks this test is a much better way to discuss the ability of machines to think, like the original question "Can machines think?" “Machine” and “think” should be defined in such a way that a large majority of people agree on how the words are “commonly used.” This would require extensive "statistical investigation" and would likely result in a question "too meaningless to merit discussion", hence the idea of ​​using his test as a replacement. If we agree on the need for the replacement test, then we must determine the validity of that test. One objection, which Turing calls "the argument from consciousness," refers to the ability or inability of a machine to derive responses, sentences, and sayings from emotions. The argument, presented by "Professor Jefferson's Lister orientation for 1949", asserts that "'no mechanism could feel' (...) 'the pleasure of its success, the sorrow when its valves fuse, to be warmed by flattery " " etc. This suggests that the machine must have an emotional motive, or conscious choice, behind what it says in order to truly think through its responses. However, Turing argues that this would mean that the only way to prove that a machine thinks "is to be the machine and feel itself thinking." Because this is, of course, impossible and applies to anything potentially sentient, machine or otherwise, it is also impossible to prove that a human, other than oneself, thinks. Therefore, this solipsistic view "makes the communication of ideas difficult" and "instead of continually debating this point", one should simply assume that "everyone thinks", or more precisely, everyone who appears to think, actually do it. Another objection, which Turing calls "Lady Lovelace's objection", argues that, unlike humans, machines have no "?”