[chongli]

demonstrating understanding of abstract concepts.

What sort of test can show that a subject demonstrates an understanding of abstract concepts?

So far, from what I've seen, if a test can be written then software can be written to solve the test.

[Houshalter]

You could talk to it or you could have it solve a difficult problem.

[chongli]

Right. That's commonly called the Turing test. This just pushes back the problem of defining intelligence to one of creating a proper Turing test. How do we do that?

[Houshalter]

The Turing test is actually a pretty decent and straightforward test.

I don't understand why this is an issue though. Testing intelligence was never the hard part of AI. There are so many tasks that computers currently suck at that we would be happy if they were solved, regardless what label you gave the solution. And I don't think many people could see a computer doing tasks like having conversations or solving difficult problems and deny that it is intelligence. Even if there is no formal test to perform that is 100% certain.

[chongli]

The Turing test is actually a pretty decent and straightforward test.

How so? To me, it appears completely open-ended. You could sit there forever asking questions and never reach a definitive result.

[Houshalter]

I don't see how. Have you ever tried talking to a chatbot? It becomes apparent pretty quickly that it's not intelligent.