The Comparative Imitation Game and the Real “Turing Test”
CHAPTER PROLOGUE
Consider the possibility that the “imitation game” as it was proposed by the British computer scientist Alan Turing has been misinterpreted as a measure of machine intelligence. When instead, its deeper purpose might have been to challenge humans: to reflect on how much of human intelligence is real, and how much is learned imitation. In this light, the real test isn’t whether machines can imitate humans, but whether humans already become like machines.
“Can a Machine Think?”
Alan Turing, a British mathematician and computer scientist, in his paper “Computing Machinery and Intelligence”, published in 1950, raised the question: “Can a machine think?”, but didn’t answer the question what it means to think. Instead, he introduced the “imitation game”: It asked whether a machine could convincingly imitate human responses, but perhaps more subtly, it may have questioned the extent to which human intelligence is itself imitation.
In context of imitation, we can draw a metaphoric parallel to Emperor Augustus, the first Emperor, whom served as the “first citizen”, where the citizens were imitations of the empiric self-image of the first. With this in mind, did Alan Turing counter that we can’t know the internal experiences of others, including machines? He didn’t explicitly state that we can’t know the internal experiences of others. Counters are responses presented to challenge a position and in a metaphoric sense, he didn’t explicitly challenge the position of the “first citizen” by providing a definition of what it could mean to “think”.
Speculatively, did Alan Turing avoid directly defining “think” due to its complexity or was it based on philosophic reasoning? Maybe “think” aren’t that complex, but instead the complexity may lay in the fact that there was no single academic agreed-upon definition of “think”, and still is a continuing debate in Western thought.
Now we raise the question “Can a machine think?”. A machine isn’t conscious and therefor can’t think, but instead, in a symbolic sense have “thoughts”. Thoughts are of the auto (“self”) and are biased since they are automatically based on beliefs and opinions, shaped by influence and experiences. Automata is a human limitation and linguistically, limitation rime with imitation: the Imitation Game.
The Comparative “Turing Test”: Intellect Doesn’t Need to Prove Itself
In a philosophic speculation, Alan Turing, a mind of intellect; original, insightful, and self-aware, stood in contrast to both the machines and the machine patterns of human thought. Perhaps intelligence is an imitation. While intellect isn’t an imitation, but instead of the kind that doesn’t need to prove itself.
Alan Turing’s philosophic “imitation game” was interpreted and adapted, today often known as the Turing Test. The naming could imply that the test is to compare with Turing’s intellect, but that usually isn’t the intent of the Turing Test in the comparative context of machine intelligence.
Consider the possibility that the “imitation game” has been misinterpreted as a measure of machine intelligence, when instead, its deeper purpose might have been to challenge us: to reflect on how much of our so-called intelligence is real and how much is learned imitation. In this light, the real test isn’t whether machines can imitate humans but whether humans already become like machines.
Then, the Turing test is to question the nature of the “imitation game” itself. Perhaps the line isn’t at human and machine, but between imitation and intellect. Maybe ‘think’ begins where imitation ends. Thinking as ‘to think’ aren’t the same as thinking thoughts. When there are thoughts, we can’t think: Western thought was derived through Roman thoughts about ancient Greek thinkers.
IN THE METAPHORIC AND SYMBOLIC TALKING HEAD:
Roman [rhoman] means “human”.
Roman is the human.
Rho (Ρ) is a Greek letter that symbolise a head.
Rho is the human head.
Rho is the symbol for density (ρ).
Rhoman is density in the head.
When there is density in the head, we can’t think.
When thoughts: “All roads lead to Rome”: ruminating.
When there are thoughts in the head, we can’t think.
There is no space for the Greek thinker to think.
