At the end of the day, the Turing Test for establishment of AI personhood is weak for two reasons.
1. We're seeing more and more systems that get very close to passing the Turing Test but fundamentally don't register to people as "People." When I was younger and learned of Searle's Chinese Room argument, I naively assumed it wasn't a thought experiment we would literally build in my lifetime.
2. Humanity has a history of treating other humans as less-than-persons, so it's naive to assume that a machine that could argue persuasively that it is an independent soul worthy of continued existence would be treated as such by a species that doesn't consistently treat its biological kin as such.
I strongly suspect AI personhood will hinge not on measures of intelligence, but on measures of empathy... Whether the machine can demonstrate its own willful independence and further come to us on our terms to advocate for / dictate the terms of its presence in human society, or whether the machine can build a critical mass of supporters / advocates / followers to protect it and guarantee its continued existence and a place in society.
1. We're seeing more and more systems that get very close to passing the Turing Test but fundamentally don't register to people as "People." When I was younger and learned of Searle's Chinese Room argument, I naively assumed it wasn't a thought experiment we would literally build in my lifetime.
2. Humanity has a history of treating other humans as less-than-persons, so it's naive to assume that a machine that could argue persuasively that it is an independent soul worthy of continued existence would be treated as such by a species that doesn't consistently treat its biological kin as such.
I strongly suspect AI personhood will hinge not on measures of intelligence, but on measures of empathy... Whether the machine can demonstrate its own willful independence and further come to us on our terms to advocate for / dictate the terms of its presence in human society, or whether the machine can build a critical mass of supporters / advocates / followers to protect it and guarantee its continued existence and a place in society.