I don't propose harder tests myself, because it doesn't make sense within my philosophy about this. When those tests are passed, to me it doesn't prove that the AI proponents are right about their systems being intelligent; it proves that the test-setters were wrong about what intelligence entails.
Nobody made any claim in this thread that modern AIs have thoughts.
What these (increasingly complicated) tests do is demonstrate the capacity to act intelligently. Ie, make choices which are aligned with some goal or reward function. Win at chess. Produce outputs indistinguishable from the training data. Whatever.
But you're right - I'm smuggling in a certain idea of what intelligence is. Something like: Intelligence is the capacity to select actions (outputs) which maximise an externally defined given reward function over time. (See also AIXI: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIXI ).
> When those tests are passed, [..] to me it proves that the test-setters were wrong about what intelligence entails.
It might be helpful for you to define your terms if you're going to make claims like that. What does intelligence mean to you then? My best guess from your comment is something like "intelligence is whatever makes humans special". Which sounds like a useless definition to me.
Why does it matter if an AI has thoughts? AI based systems, from MNIST solvers to deep blue to chatgpt have clearly gotten better at something. Whatever that something is, is very very interesting.
Yes, you understand me. I simply come in with a different idea.
>AI based systems, from MNIST solvers to deep blue to chatgpt have clearly gotten better at something. Whatever that something is, is very very interesting.
Certainly the fact that the outputs look the way they do, is interesting. It strongly suggests that our models of how neurons work are not only accurate, but creating simulations according to those models has surprisingly useful applications (until something goes wrong. Of course, humans also have an error rate, but human errors still seem fundamentally different in kind.)
Is there something particularly unique about biological circuits that allow thought, as opposed to electronic ones?
> I'm still not convinced birds can fly any more than a rock shaped like a bird would convince me that it's flying.
The idea of ChatGPT being asked to "think" just reminds me of Pozzo from Waiting for Godot.
"There is superstition about creativity, and for that matter, about thinking in every sense, and it's part of the history of the field of artificial intelligence that every time somebody figured out how to make a computer do something - play good checkers, solve simple but relatively informal problems - there was a chorus of critics to say, but that's not thinking."
That's from 1979! https://simonwillison.net/2024/Sep/13/pamela-mccorduck-in-19...