(urth) 5HC : Chinese boxes or tea chests?

[Maru Dubshinki]

Ahh, now that depends on your philosphical position. If you go with
Penrose and suchlike, then all you have to do is see if they pass the
Turing Test and also run on the right substrate.  But if you take the
Strong AI position, and argue that intelligence and counsciousness are
independent of the physical instantiation, that what is relevant is
the pattern, then they have to fall back on observations, to what are
essentially variations on the Turing Test.
I'll leave out how every thought about reality is but a probability,
since it isn't really relevant.
But you left out the Bayesian Beta Regulisians:   Examine carefully
their actions, material culture, and the results of various tests you
carry out. Weight them all into the formula, obtain your best
probability, then evaluate expected utility and go from there.

~Maru
Microsoft delenda est.

Chris <rasputin_ at hotmail.com> wrote:
> Maru said:
> >Suppose further that they made like a human, solving all
> >technical problems, and an advanced alien civilization came by
> >impressed by what they had done.  Would the aliens accord the robots
> >'personhood' and would they be right or wrong?
> 
> You've stipulated they don't have "real consciousness", but the important
> unknown is: do the aliens have the ability to tell the difference, or if
> they are uncertain, do they have an estimate of probability for the robots
> having "real consciousness"?