The Alien
jeferson.me
What the chinese alien experiment can teach us about ourselfs, and also about AI? Maybe people already have discussed this in the past. So discusver with me.

I’ve wrote this post to discuss if we can infer intelligence from the inside of the machine. I’ve my own view on the topic, maybe this is something that you folks could enjoy the read.

All feedback is welcome.

  • foggy@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    2 months ago

    So thas exactly why I brought up Plato. And I think the song and lyrics do an excellent job summarizing,

    Your title asks whether we can infer intelligence. Verbatim. The answer to that is, again, yes. We do it constantly.

    You cannot directly observe my intelligence or thoughts. You observe my behavior, language, problem-solving, etc., and infer intelligence from those outputs. The same applies to a machine.

    The Chinese Room raises a different question: whether apparently intelligent behavior is sufficient to establish understanding or semantic content. That is not the same as asking whether intelligence can be inferred.

    Saying “it’s just following rules” doesn’t setkle that question either. Humans are also physical systems whose cognition is implemented through mechanisms. The existence of rules or mechanisms does not itself show that intelligence is absent.

    So becaus your question is specifically “can we infer intelligence?”, yes.

    Now, If the question is “does intelligent-looking behavior prove semantic understanding or consciousness?”, that’s a different and much harder question. But most importantly, it’s not the question you asked.

    • Shin@piefed.socialOPEnglish
      0·
      2 months ago

      Holy molly, that was an amazing summary.

      Thanks very much. I’ve even more questions now, and for sure I’ll take some time researching on the topic of evaluating the understanding (and semantics on this sense).

      But you are right, we can infer intelligence, we can’t guarantee the semantics on the topic.

      • foggy@lemmy.worldEnglish
        0·
        2 months ago

        In short, Plato’s Allegory of the Cave imagines people who have spent their entire lives chained inside a cave, able to see only shadows projected on a wall. Because the shadows are all they have ever known, they mistake them for reality itself.

        One prisoner escapes and discovers the outside world, realizing that what everyone in the cave took to be reality was only a limited representation of it.

        The core idea is that our perspective can constrain what we think is real or knowable. We may be interpreting appearances without access to the fuller reality that produces them.