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Re:Researchers reach human parity in conversational speech r... by abecedarius on Tuesday October 18, 2016 @05:46PM (#12739019)
Turing wasn't trying there to articulate a single target for AI research, he was responding to the claim that artificial minds were not possible even in principle. His response was basically, try this, if in open-ended conversation you couldn't tell one from a human, would you really still say there's no mind there? As you say, that's a really high bar from where we are, then or now.

I'm sure Turing's own goals for AI were broader than eventually passing the Turing test. He worked on neural nets himself and would've considered progress in perception as partial progress in AI.

Re:Researchers reach human parity in conversational speech r... by arstin on Tuesday October 18, 2016 @06:09PM (#12739183)
Yep! The assertion that Turing was setting a "single target for AI research" in the way you're using the phrase was clearly not what he was doing or, I hope, what I said. My intent was the opposite: to draw attention the massive range of "targets for research" which are already implicit in the original Turing Test in order to note that saying "there's still lots more to do" is hardly "moving the goalpost".

Just to link up the way you put things with the way I chose to here, his argument for how an artificial mind is possible proposes a reasonable, minimal standard which different sides can agree to---a criterion of, "well if it can do that then sure it's a mind!". And the choice of a open and unbounded conversation as the standard was brilliant because of the massive range of subcompetencies which are required for actually executing it (including, obviously, perception). Which, of course, we gradually continue to plod through in AI research.

Re:Researchers reach human parity in conversational speech r... by abecedarius on Tuesday October 18, 2016 @10:28PM (#12740526)
Agreed, and you're right that I mistook your intent.