The amazing irreplaceability of the human condition

Often imitated, never duplicated.

Alan Turing once hypothesized that a machine capable of imitating humans in conversation would be ostensibly “intelligent.” Later in life he downplayed these ideas but the notion of a “Turing Test” for machine intelligence remains. 

As we’re fond of saying, there’s nothing a chatbot could say that would convince us it was an artificial general intelligence (AGI) or human-level artificial intelligence. 

Read more: What could a chatbot say that would convince you it was intelligent?

That being said, it’s important to understand that people aren’t machines. We’re all entitled to our opinions. 

As Abraham Lincoln said in 1858: “You can fool all the people some of the time and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.”

The take away here is that almost all people can be fooled at least some of the time. Patience may be the best approach as we prepare for the impending onslaught of claims surrounding the emergence of “human-level” AI. 

The AI era

Generative AI models are exactly as “human” as you believe them to be. Their conversational abilities have risen to a point where, rather than imitating the average person, they come off like recently-hired personal assistants with a deep background in customer service. 

For many, that alone demonstrates that the machines are “good enough” imitations of humanity for generative purposes. Others see it as evidence that the uncanny valley between human and machine is as wide as it’s ever been. 

Who’s to tell either camp they’re wrong? 

We can be sure of a lot when it comes to the nature of artificial intelligence, but we can never be sure if what we know aligns with what the next person believes. 

Humanity rising

For those who believe that AI models are capable of “human-level” intelligence, this is an exciting time. There’s a lot to explore and anything that doesn’t seem to support that directive is noise at best.

It’s a frustrating time for those who don’t believe. We feel like those people who walk around actively noticing everyone using their smartphones. We see a future with even less human-to-human interaction. We worry about degraded connections as emails are generated by the sender’s AI assistant and summarized by the recipient’s.

There’s little room for discourse or common ground within the current zeitgeist. 

Fortunately, this is when humanity is at its best. We’re good at living with our disagreements when those disagreements are philosophical. 

Once a killer consumer application for generative AI emerges, the gray area between optimist and cynic will broaden. And, if no such application is imminent, the prestidigitation of generative AI will eventually wear off. When that happens, we’ll find out how many people are willing to pay to use chatbots. 

All things considered, at this point we should worry more about the global economy than our collective humanity. 

Read next: AGI should be neither seen nor heard

Art by Nicole Greene