I think the differences between us are rather small, in fact. I do have a different definition of thinking, which is not fully explicit. It would go along the lines of “a thinking machine should demonstrate human-like abilities in most situations and not be extremely stupid in some areas”. The intuition is that if there is a general intelligence, rather than simply a list of specific rules, then it’s competence shouldn’t completely collapse when facing unusual situations.
The “test systems on situations they’re not optimised” approach was trying to establish whether there would be such a collapse in skill. Of course you can’t test for every situation, but you can get a good idea this way.
I agree with you concerning Searle’s errors (see my takes on Searle at http://lesswrong.com/lw/ghj/searles_cobol_room/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/gyx/ai_prediction_case_study_3_searles_chinese_room/ )
I think the differences between us are rather small, in fact. I do have a different definition of thinking, which is not fully explicit. It would go along the lines of “a thinking machine should demonstrate human-like abilities in most situations and not be extremely stupid in some areas”. The intuition is that if there is a general intelligence, rather than simply a list of specific rules, then it’s competence shouldn’t completely collapse when facing unusual situations.
The “test systems on situations they’re not optimised” approach was trying to establish whether there would be such a collapse in skill. Of course you can’t test for every situation, but you can get a good idea this way.