[westoncb]

Two things:

1) The A.I is not just a set of symbols, it's a physical machine, which means you're answering a different question.

2) The structure of the test means that you have stripped down the objects to be compared to the sounds they produce, and yet a person is more than sounds, as is the computer. Whenever we use the relation 'X is a Y' there is an implicit definition of the identities of X and Y; the more abstract it that definition is, the more things your relation will accept; at some level of abstraction the human and the A.I. may be called equivalent—but you'd have to state which one you're talking about.

[zbyte64]

1) You need something to compute the outcome of the symbols in order to test the accuracy of those symbols. I am not sure how to experimentally test your point without doing so. Perhaps that is the crux of the issue, we can't test symbols without tying them to a "physical medium".

2) We can introduce more communication layers as you desire and still keep in the spirit of the experiment. I opted for the strip down version due to simplicity of describing the experiment and the similarity it has to the turing test.