Skip to content

An Intelligent Machine Would Never Reveal to Us Its Intelligence

I think the test of a truly intelligent machine is if you really had an intelligent machine, it would not reveal it’s intelligence to us. 
Sign up for the Smarter Faster newsletter
A weekly newsletter featuring the biggest ideas from the smartest people

Nowhere that I’ve seen did Alan Turing himself ever make any prediction about the Turing test.  He didn’t say this is going to happen in 10 years or 20 years.  It was later on that people who, generally, in their proposals to the Defense Department for funding, would say “give us enough millions of dollars and we’ll do this.  We’ll deliver this machine in ten years.” And they failed.  


I wouldn’t read a lot into that.  My view of the Turing test is quite different.  My view is the opposite.  I think the test of a truly intelligent machine is if you really had an intelligent machine, it would not reveal it’s intelligence to us. 

It would play dumber than it really is.  So if you subscribe to my view, the Turing test is sort of meaningless and it doesn’t mean anything that we haven’t passed.  We think no machine has passed that test…

60 Second Reads is recorded in Big Think’s studio.

Image courtesy fo Shutterstock

Sign up for the Smarter Faster newsletter
A weekly newsletter featuring the biggest ideas from the smartest people

Related