is this the largest scale Turing test ever performed on an audience acutely aware of what a Turing test is?

I think fewer people know what the Imitation game actually consists of than think they do - namely that a questioner has to guess whether a machine is a respondent to their questions, rather than another player. That certainly hasn't been tried with GPT-3 that I'm aware of.

However I would agree that it is an oblique version - that is, can a machine fool humans into thinking that they are human.

In which case I think it's probably safe to assume that GPT-3 has passed.

Turing actually asked a slightly different question, that I think is a lot more interesting. From Computing Machinery and Intelligence by A. M. Turing:

> The object of the game for the interrogator is to determine which of the other two is the man and which is the woman. He knows them by labels X and Y, and at the end of the game he says either "X is A and Y is B" or "X is B and Y is A." The interrogator is allowed to put questions to A and B

> What will happen when a machine takes the part of A in this game?" Will the interrogator decide wrongly as often when the game is played like this as he does when the game is played between a man and a woman?

Somewhat politically incorrect, assuming men and women should ever be distinguished, but much more revealing about how exactly people see themselves.

Wow, good observation. I wouldn't be surprised if this is actually true.

Any evidence to suggest that HN crowd distribution doesn't lean towards Pareto?

how does pareto distribution apply in considering hn comments? you're saying a small % are aware of Turing tests and the rest are gullible? perhaps.

> how does pareto distribution apply in considering hn comments? you're saying a small % are aware of Turing tests and the rest are gullible? perhaps.

Exactly.

The problem is that it's also true. Comments like that decrease the quality of the discussion by attacking the "author" rather than the content.

(If the commenter had written even a couple sentences on why they suspected GPT-3, I would feel differently.)

I mean, there's not much to elaborate on beyond what they said: "Zero substantive content, pure regurgitation."

It's not true, though. There really is substantive content in that blog post (although it's trite and probably useless advice, it's certainly making a real argument).

I dunno. "Trite" and "substantiative" usually don't go together.

Then don't say anything. Click the hide button.

I agree, and this is my instinct, but I worry about the effort becoming very asymmetric. In a world where a large amount of content CAN be generated (my time to read becomes much larger than time to generate / get my attention), and I may or may not be reading sincerely generated content, at what point do I get to attack the content creator for that, especially since it's very difficult for me to understand any given content creators intentions without some level of social proof or trust.

I think we're likely to get to a place where we either consolidate to trusted sources of information, or accept machine generated content as valuable on its own, even if for novelty and just move on with our miserable lives.

This is exactly the reason why academics like their ivory tower, and value credentials more than egalitarian hackers do.

Because they can trust the work of their peers as having met some agreed upon standard, or are you saying academics are bad and hackers are actually egalitarian as a general rule?

Trust is important. Hackers are naive and will rediscover the old lessons.

Exactly. I can't tell if that poster actually suspects the content was generated, or if they are simply using the comparison as an insult.

As a criticism, i don't see how that matters. An article written by a human at the quality level of gpt-3 has the same value as an article actually written by gpt-3. Knowing that gpt-3 actually wrote the article doesn't change its level vapidity. Either the article is vapid or it isn't.

But there's no need to accuse the author of being a robot. They could have written:

> This article is vapid. Zero substantive content, pure regurgitation

Now, I would still have downvoted such a comment. If I'm reading a thread, I clearly like at least the article's topic, and I want to read more on that topic, not dismissive comments telling me that it's stupid. But, at least the modified version focuses on the content, rather than the author.

It's possible to point out issues with a submission without insulting the submitter or author. Calling what is presumably a person the equivalent of GPT-3 is needlessly rude. Even insulting the work, but not the (presumed) person behind it is better.

OP should apply to be a Blade Runner. Hottest new job.

Totally sound and what we need more of anyways.