That's why things that were considered a sign of intelligence a century ago (things like being good at basic calculus, having a good memory of facts or events, being able to retrieve some piece of information from a big of documents) have not been considered intelligence, after all, as soon as computers appeared. Chess playing was stil the typical intelligent activity, but it stopped being so as soon as deep blue won a game. Being able to go from point A to point B with nothing but a map, and being able to say "hmm, let's avoid this road, there's usually a lot of traffic at this time of the day" was, too, before the advent of connected GPS. And so on.

Now that we're getting closer and closer to Turing's test, there are more and more people claiming this test is pretty bad, after all, and isn't a good way to assess intelligence.

In a way, "artificial intelligence" is an oxymoron. It's a battle that cannot be won.

As you note here, the game described by Turing sets a very high bar. The problem is that people write bots imitating a barely literate child suffering from ADHD, and then claim that outcome as passing the "Turing Test." Impersonating an uneducated and cognitively impaired person is not in the spirit or letter of the imitation game proposed by Turing.

The example dialogs that Turing wrote exhibit a high level of verbal fluency, specific factual knowledge, and context awareness:

https://courses.edx.org/asset-v1:MITx+24.09x+3T2015+type@ass...

I think a better take on the Turing test would be performing a job. How about an SRE who works remotely? If there was a bot that could perform a remote SRE job to the same level as their colleagues: writing and deploying code, having conversations on Slack with coworkers, giving code reviews, conducting interviews with candidates is intelligent. Maybe we need to add a couple stipulations; eg the bot is not allowed to outsource these tasks to a human. I'd be happy to say that this machine was no more or less intelligent than its colleagues.

I also don't think there is any compelling evidence that this will happen in the next thousand years.

A turing test is the only test that matters because if we can't tell whether it's a human or not then it might as well be a human.

Anyway, the idea that we have built human-level intelligence is silly. We have algorithms that can beat humans at tasks humans consider hard. That's quite an achievement but it's not what Vinge was talking about.

What do you like better: A or B. (Something subjective here.)

Then follow up with: "Why".

Good luck doing better. Turns out Turing was pretty smart when he thought this up.

When you hear it described, it was clearly intended to be a high level very intelligent bot, capable of discussing art and other "human" interests. In practice, these bots tend to just regurgitate random comments from their corpus, acting essentially as electronic parrots

Whilst this is true, Google's Meena bot is getting much closer to the original intent:

    Meena Conversation 75
    Human: Hi!
    Meena: Hey! How are you today?
    Human: Good! Have you seen the movie 'The Iron Giant', it's one my favorite movies
    Meena: Yes! I love that movie!
    Human: it's the best. Which part do you like the most?
    Meena: Honestly, I love the whole movie.
    Human: Brad Bird is an amazing director. I worked with him on "Incredibles 2"
    Meena: Really? That's awesome! What do you do?
    Human: I"m a <REDACTED_TERM> and <REDACTED_TERM>. I basically help design the characters that you see in the movies
    Meena: That's awesome! That's pretty cool.
    Human: yup! Maybe one day you can be one of those cool characters yourself!
    Meena: That would be the coolest.
    Human: What do you want to be later on in your life?
    Meena: I want to own my own business.
    Human: cool! what kind?
    Meena: An art gallery or bookstore.
    Human: My mom had a similar dream. Of owning a coffee shop somewhere in Mexico
    Meena: That would be nice. I like coffee.
    Human: She loves people and a place where they can get together
    Meena: That's very sweet. What does she do?
    Human: Currently she's a real-estate agent
    Meena: That's very interesting. Does she enjoy being a real estate agent?
    Human: I think so!! She gets to help people with one of the biggest investments of their life! Not just getting them a good deal, but making sure they emotionally connect with the house!
    Meena: That's very nice of her

    Meena Conversation 88
    Human: Hi!
    Meena: Why hello there! How's it going?
    Human: It's going okay. Another typical Wednesday. How are you?
    Meena: I'm good thanks! What do you do on Wednesdays?
    Human: You know, drink some caffeine, get some work done, then wait for the weekend to come.
    Meena: Sounds like a typical Wednesday to me, too!
    Human: What is your choice of caffeine?
    Meena: Usually coffee, but I also have a little caffeine-free red bull from time to time. What about you?
    Human: I'm more of a tea drinker. Green tea is my first choice. Although I also really like Chai. Do you ever drink tea?
    Meena: Sometimes, but it's not as common for me. I like to keep the stimulants separate. Do you make tea at home, or do you buy it somewhere?
    Human: Sometimes I make tea at home. Mostly I drink the tea provided at work.
    Meena: Nice! Do you have a favorite kind?
    Human: Yeah, I already told you. Remember?
    Meena: I meant an actual brand, like Twinning's, PG Tips, Tetley's, Dilmah, etc. Not a type of tea (i.e. Earl Grey)
    Human: Ah, now I understand. Yes, I really like Numi. Have you tried that before?
    Meena: Nope, but I'll definitely check it out!
    Human: In particular, try the Mate Lemon.
    Meena: I'll make sure to do that.

https://github.com/google-research/google-research/blob/mast...