🚀 go-pugleaf

jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton) writes:

>It's true that I don't know what you look like, haven't mapped your
>DNA or done other things of that sort; and it's true that the only
>direct evidence I have is behavioral...

That's all I mean by "using the Turing Test"; using only behavioral
evidence.

>Really?  Behavior is (roughly) the causal relationship between a
>history of effects and some actions?  Does everyone out there
>recognize this as what they mean by "behavior"?  It certainly looks
>wrong to me.

Whoops. I meant:

     Behavior is the causal relationship between a history of
     effects of the environment on the system, and the actions taken
     by the system.

>>A TT-style interview cannot possibly determine what a person's
>>behavior is like,
>>it can only provide data that can rule out *some* possible behaviors.
>>At the point where the interviewer is convinced that he has ruled out the
>>most likely kinds of nonintelligent behaviors, he concludes that the
>>interviewee is intelligent. 
>
>What?  Are you suggesting an intelligent entity cannot behave in
>nonintelligent ways?

Yes. As I said, behavior is a causal relationship between inputs and
outputs, it is *not* simply a sequence of actions. While it may be
possible to classify actions as "unintelligent", and it may be
possible for an intelligent entity to produce an unintelligent action,
I don't believe it is possible for an intelligent entity to have an
unintelligent behavior (or vice-versa).

>And if not, what has been ruled out?

You can rule out the possibility that the entity completely ignores
what is said to it (as a phonograph does). You can rule out the
possibility that the entity simply repeats what is said to it (as
a parrot does). You can rule out the possibility that the output
is simply a syntactic rearrangement of the inputs (as Eliza does).

>>It's an imperfect judgement based on insufficient data, but then so
>>are all judgements that people make in the real world.
>
>But we don't treat them all as equally justified!

Agreed. But the judging intelligence (and other mental properties)
based on behavioral evidence is about as justified as any fallible
test can be.

Daryl McCullough
ORA Corp.
Ithaca, NY