2021-22 SotA Anthology 2021-22 | Page 147

seems a long way off . Even when computers are set loose to freely mine huge corpuses of our data to independently chart the connections inside , using cutting-edge techniques derived from ' deep learning ' models arising from cognitive neuroscience , ultimately it takes a human somewhere in the loop to know whether the ' rules ' the machine subsequently derives are properly sensible at all . Hence there cannot be a case for the machine having the mental processes of thought and understanding , even if , from a functionalist perspective , it might frequently produce outputs that are indistinguishable from those of a minded , thinking human . Nevertheless , even if we really cannot tell a difference between the symbolic outputs of a human mind and those of computer algorithms , this still does not present a case for multiple realisability of the same functional mental states , rather independent realisability of equivalent functional outputs .
Turing himself provided an easily performable experiment when making his case that his universal computation machine could perhaps perform in a way functionally equivalent to thinking . His Imitation Game , also known as the Turing Test , poses an interlocutor interrogating the responses of two unknown entities inside a room ( Turing , 1950 ). Turing ' s interlocutor can pose any question they like to each entity , and from their responses he has to be able to tell which is human , and which is a machine , and if they cannot decide , this proves , according to Turing , that functional equivalence is all that matters . diversity of our thought , and forces us onto the only level playing field where a computer might be able to win . To fool a thinker , one would have to play on their board , and that , for a human , includes ones where rules go out of the window , and where ultimately , reason is often the slave of the passions .
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Searle , J . ( I 980 ). Minds , Brains , and Programs , Behavioral and Brain Sciences , 3 , pages 417- 457 .
Turing , A . ( 1950 ). Computing Machinery and lntelligence , Mind , 59 ( 236 ), October 1950 , pages 433-460 .
Turing , A . ( 1935 ). On Computable Numbers , with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem , Proceedings of the London Mathematical Society 2 ( 42 ), pages 230-256 .
Wittgenstein , L . ( 1958 ). The Blue and Brown Books . Blackwell , Oxford . Wittgenstein , L . ( 2009 ). Philosophical Investigations , 4th Edition . Wiley- Blackwell , Chichester .
However , the limits of this test show it to ultimately be a moot one — our intersubjective attunement to others as thinking beings does not simply reduce down to their symbolic outputs , and so limiting the test strictly to words imposes an unfair limitation on how we might express the
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