You could, of course, do machine checks of some subset of "can generate syntactically correct English" -and that would cut out a whole lot more bad programs than 'can you write MacBeth.'

but- even when you pass that test, you will have a nearly infinite number of marcov-chain generators and similar programs to sort through.

My point is that if you want to solve a program by generating random code, you need machine-executable fitness test.

We don't have a machine-executable test for consciousness. The Turing test relies on the intuition of humans, and we have a very finite supply of that.

> even when you pass that test, you will have a nearly infinite number of marcov-chain generators and similar programs to sort through

Not really relevant to your point, but Markov chain generators aren't able to generate syntactically correct English.

(Or, they are able to generate it, but they aren't able to stop themselves from generating syntactically invalid English, and almost all of their output will in fact be invalid.)

I think writing Macbeth isn't a good indicator of anything except being Shakespeare. Asking it a few questions about some general concepts like logic, math, and patterns(relationships in Macbeth maybe?) would probably yield results that are much more likely to pass the test.

I disagree on all counts. The first program that would be generated by such a procedure would very likely be the constant program that happens to always respond with the correct questions to your test. It depends how you randomly generate code, of course, but I doubt the complexity of a "general AI program" would ever be smaller than the complexity of the constant program which by luck returns the correct answer to your test.

Generate the Math tests then? That prevents constants.

Generating macbeth is a prompt most people here couldn’t pass, myself included...

you can still use generating Macbeth as a good indicator, just by providing some inputs and constraints.

Input is a Macbeth outline/play summary (e.g. https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/m/macbeth/play-summar... ) Contraints are "in the style of : KingLear and Othello"

and compare the produced text to Macbeth