Opinion: Remember ELIZA? The 1966 chatbot from MIT’s AI Lab persuaded many it was intelligent with just basic pattern matching and pre-written responses. Today, ChatGPT has people repeating that error. Chatbots don’t think – they’re merely excellent at faking it more effectively.

Alan Turing’s 1950 test proposed a straightforward benchmark: if a conversation with a machine is indistinguishable from one with a human, the machine is intelligent. By this measure, many modern chatbots pass the test. However, this success is more about improving deception than true understanding.

Recent studies show humans struggle to differentiate between AI-generated and human voices. While this is advantageous for scammers, it leaves others vulnerable. Imagine a scammer using cloned voices to impersonate family members and trick you into financial transactions.

The philosophical debate predates the AI era. John Searle, in 1980, introduced the ‘Chinese Room’ argument, suggesting machines could simulate understanding without true intelligence, analogous to language processing without comprehension.

Generative AI is just high-level copying. Despite hype around Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), true intelligence in machines remains a distant goal.

OpenAI’s Sam Altman claims they know how to develop AGI, but skepticism is warranted. True AGI requires a level of inventiveness and comprehension that current technologies lack. We see AI regurgitating internet-sourced solutions, often mistaken as creativity.

The hope of reaching AGI is alive, though timelines are uncertain. Until then, equating machine capabilities to human understanding remains a fundamental misinterpretation.