July 27, 2014
Did you know that an artificial intelligence named “Eugene Goostman” recently passed the Turing Test, our gold standard criterion for whether an AI is conscious? At least, that’s what many media outlets breathlessly reported. In this episode of Rationally Speaking, Julia and Massimo take a critical look at Eugene, and at the Turing test in general as a standard for consciousness. In the process they debate what it would mean for an AI to be conscious, and how we could ever tell.