Arun Pandiyan

“In a paper published in 1950, the computer scientist Alan Turing suggested a legendary test for whether an AI exhibited human-level intelligence. When AI could display humanlike conversational abilities for a lengthy period of time, such that a human interlocutor couldn’t tell they were speaking to a machine, the test would be passed: the AI, conversationally akin to a human, deemed intelligent. For more than seven decades this simple test has been an inspiration for many young researchers entering the field of AI. Today, as the LaMDA-sentience saga illustrates, systems are already close to passing the Turing test. But, as many have pointed out, intelligence is about so much more than just language (or indeed any other single facet of intelligence taken in isolation). One particularly important dimension is in the ability to take actions. We don’t just care about what a machine can say; we also care about what it can do. What we would really like to know is, can I give an AI an ambiguous, open-ended, complex goal that requires interpretation, judgment, creativity, decision-making, and acting across multiple domains, over an extended time period, and then see the AI accomplish that goal? Put simply, passing a Modern Turing Test would involve something like the following: an AI being able to successfully act on the instruction “Go make $1 million on Amazon in a few months with just a $100,000 investment.” It might research the web to look at what’s trending, finding what’s hot and what’s not on Amazon Marketplace; generate a range of images and blueprints of possible products; send them to a drop-ship manufacturer it found on Alibaba; email back and forth to refine the requirements and agree on the contract; design a seller’s listing; and continually update marketing materials and product designs based on buyer feedback. Aside from the legal requirements of registering as a business on the marketplace and getting a bank account, all of this seems to me eminently doable. I think it will be done35 with a few minor human interventions within the next year, and probably fully autonomously within three to five years.”
― Mustafa Suleyman, The Coming Wave