We used to think the Roman Emperor (or equivalent) was the sole source of truth and understanding. Then we thought it was the church. The Enlightenment changed that to individual science and reason. We're currently (for the last 70 years or so) on a kick about how everything reduces to bits and bytes.
I was thinking this morning about how in the 80s AI researchers would argue whether or not a computer that played chess was "actually" playing chess, ie, was it conscious and having the experience people did when they played chess? Our answer from that period was something like "Who cares? If to me the computer looks like it is playing chess, it's playing chess. How can I tell differently?"
The rule here is that everything reduces to my generalized conception of how this transaction/game plays out. That's the Turing Test.
But this just shows how stupid people are. It doesn't say anything about intelligence. Intelligence is transformative and pre-language. You reduce it to words and images and you've destroyed the thing you're trying to create. The human that plays chess with me is the human one day that, while moving a pawn, comments on how life seems dull to them, striking a conversation about existentialism which, in turn, changes me slightly. Or they move slower than normal, making me worry about their health, which prompts me to think about my parents. That's chess, it's not moving pieces around.
Once you spot this, you can see it over and over again. Project Management must consist of reports, graphs, video meetings, and so forth, right? Those TPS reports need their covers. Movies must be spectacle and pre-canned drama. The piece of graphic I need for my book can easily be created by AI, right? Nobody thinks that by creating my own graphic I come to a new realization about the problem I'm exploring. That's not considered "graphic arts" If it can't be digitized, it must not be important, right?
Like everything else, this will keep going until it doesn't. And like all other examples, the change will be painful. But we always seem to muddle through. And if this turns out to be an extinction-level event? I find it tremendously and oddly-pleasing that man made it through all these trials only to be destroyed by the turbo-electric bullshitting machine we finally created. Somehow that seems to suit us.