10-24-2014, 08:43 AM
(10-24-2014, 05:19 AM)iancampbell Wrote: A bit obvious but worth mentioning: A notional sapient AI which "wanted" to pass the Turing test would actually need to massively degrade its apparent capabilities for answering some of the possible questions. For example, if the question was something like "please factorise this 56-digit number into its two component primes" a human would take weeks (at least!) to answer the question, whereas a computer-based AI could do the job in a couple of seconds. (I think!)
An AI that was designed to be able to do that kind of math quickly, while also being sapient/sophont would be able to do the math quickly. But there's nothing that says that an AI must automatically be really good at math or be able to expand or transmit its mind across the internet or any of the other things that SF is so fond of having AIs do.
Most likely an AI would run on specialized hardware or software or some combination of both. Unless that hardware/software included the ability to be really good at math, the AI would be no better than a human (although it could probably use a calculator like a human). Unless that hardware/software was compatible with whatever is supporting the internet at the time, it wouldn't be able to use it any more capably than a human could.
Given time and advances in AI design (and the hardware/software running the future internet) you could create both super math whizzes and minds that could jump around the net. But it seems very unlikely that would be a first run capability.
My 2c worth,
Todd