No, the point is false negatives don't invalidate a test. It requires both intelligence and communication abilities.

Cost and accuracy are obvious trade-offs, but sometimes you are willing to trade say cost and false positives to avoid false negatives say, a mass screening for HIV in a blood sample. In that case you need a cheap test and while a false positive has minimal cost a false negative could be deadly.

Highering is the opposite case. Micdonalds want's a cheap test (interview + background) and as long they get enough acceptable low level candidate from their pool that's enough.

As such the turing test can fit the second example. A hypothetical AI could hold a huge range of real jobs even if limited to purely text based communications.

PS: Let's flip it. A super intelligent AI in a box that can't communicate in any form. Without IO it's indistinguishable from a space heater.

Your last example of the hyperintelligent space heater is exactly my point - the Turing test is a test of the (necessary) precondition of communication, but NOT a sufficient test of intelligence. In your example, the black box AI is assumed to be intelligent, but would still fail the Turing test - because intelligence is not a necessary condition for passing. Communicability IS necessary for the test.

A passing grade on the Turing test just indicates intelligence is possible, but excludes assured intelligence in the absence of communication ability, which is why I argue it is not a sufficient guarantee of intelligence.

You make a good point with the hiring example about the distinction between "intelligent" and "intelligent enough to do some things" - our disagreement may be stemming from us having differing definitions of "an intelligence". Need to think about it.

Nothing you just said invalidates the test.

X is a demonstration of intelligence says nothing about not X.

If you can design something that passes an arbitrary touring tests yes it is intelligent. For example I could teach it any subject that works in text format. It could then pass an open ended essay test. And get a reasonable essay.

Now, you could do the same thing with a pig and it would fail the test despite being more intelligent than the average dog. That just means there are limits.

This is one of the practical limits of the Turing Test as usually proposed - the parties could just refuse to jump through the hoop of writing an essay, and that would be a perfectly normal reaction. In practice, attempts to pass the Turing Test have leaned heavily on hand-coded strategies for changing the subject and feigning refusal to co-operate, with some success - for example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugene_Goostman

What I find most interesting about that strategy is in practice it fails. The strength is it can push people to wait longer before judging. The weakness is it fails to demonstrate intelligence.

So help me, I think you've convinced me. I don't know what to do with all this leftover xkcd/386 though.

Thanks for the great chat.