What do you mean by “great (awful)”? Do you mean that the thought experiment itself is an awful argument against AI, but describing the argument is a good way to test how people think?
Yes, that’s exactly what I mean. The argument itself is terrible. But it invites so many reasonable challenges that it is still very useful as a test of clear thinking. So, awful argument; great test case.
On a related note, I remember the day when I found out my PhD advisor (a computability theorist!) revealed that he believed the argument against AI from Gödel’s incompleteness theorem. It was not reassuring.
What do you mean by “great (awful)”? Do you mean that the thought experiment itself is an awful argument against AI, but describing the argument is a good way to test how people think?
Yes, that’s exactly what I mean. The argument itself is terrible. But it invites so many reasonable challenges that it is still very useful as a test of clear thinking. So, awful argument; great test case.
On a related note, I remember the day when I found out my PhD advisor (a computability theorist!) revealed that he believed the argument against AI from Gödel’s incompleteness theorem. It was not reassuring.
Smarter than human AI, or artificial human level general intelligence?
The latter.