@Bruce Stephens, thanks for the links. I found the initial post and comment by @Kerem on Scott Aaronson's blog to be particularly interesting. The question: "Does it pass a
Turing test?" was my first reaction. The important point being: The pass/fail of a Turing test doesn't depend on the answers being
correct, but rather on whether or not they are indistinguishable from those a human would give.
I think they already do, I have read in the media of young children becoming very attached to
Alexa,
Siri and
Google Assistant. I also, vaguely remember reading about an autistic child who became highly disturbed when he couldn't access Sira(?)
I assume that was a spelling mistake. If so, this is a good introduction to the subject:
Sentience.
As well as being a bit of a geek, I was a dog handler for 12 years, (highly trained military/high security type guard dogs,) and am known to be a fierce critic of
animal behaviourist who, in my opinion, are often guilty of a kind of reverse-
anthropomorphic bias.
Their tests for sentience are usually inherently biased by a human orientated view of the world with their tests assuming all animals use the same/similar primary senses. For example, the
Mirror Test, which assumes that an animals primary sense is visual. In the case of dogs, dolphins, bats .... etc, this is patently absurd.
