> If you took the current state of affairs back to the 90s you’d quickly convince most people that we’re there.
This is an interesting ambiguity in the Turing test. It does not say if the examiner is familiar with the expected level of the candidate. But I think it's an unfair advantage to the machine if it can pass based on the examiner's incredulity.
If you took a digital calculator back to the 1800s, added a 30 second delay and asked the examiner to decide if a human was providing the answer to the screen or a machine, they might well conclude that it must be human as there is no known way for a machine to perform that action. The Akinator game would probably pass the test into the 1980s.
I think the only sensible interpretation of the test is one where the examiner is willing to believe that a machine could be providing a passing set of answers before the test starts. Otherwise the test difficulty varies wildly based on the examiners impression of the current technical capabilities of machines.
This is an interesting ambiguity in the Turing test. It does not say if the examiner is familiar with the expected level of the candidate. But I think it's an unfair advantage to the machine if it can pass based on the examiner's incredulity.
If you took a digital calculator back to the 1800s, added a 30 second delay and asked the examiner to decide if a human was providing the answer to the screen or a machine, they might well conclude that it must be human as there is no known way for a machine to perform that action. The Akinator game would probably pass the test into the 1980s.
I think the only sensible interpretation of the test is one where the examiner is willing to believe that a machine could be providing a passing set of answers before the test starts. Otherwise the test difficulty varies wildly based on the examiners impression of the current technical capabilities of machines.