Computer pioneer Alan Turing’s remarks in 1950 on the question, “Can machines think?” were misquoted, misinterpreted and morphed into the so-called “Turing Test”. The modern version says if you can’t tell the difference between communicating with a machine and a human, the machine is intelligent. What Turing actually said was that by the year 2000 people would be using words like “thinking” and “intelligent” to describe computers, because interacting with them would be so similar to interacting with people. Computer scientists do not sit down and say alrighty, let’s put this new software to the Turing Test - by Grabthar’s Hammer, it passed! We’ve achieved Artificial Intelligence!
Exactly this. We’re always moving the goalposts to maintain the belief of human exceptionalism. We also used to say that tool use and construction were what separated humans from the animals, until examples were found of animals using or making tools, and then we moved the goalposts further to exclude them.
This pervasive belief that humans are beyond nature or singularly extraordinary in their intelligence and consciousness is rooted in arrogance and bad science, and it hinders our understanding of science and consciousness and our place in the universe.
If an intelligence is able to feign consciousness so well that we can’t distinguish it from “real” sentience, then it’s close enough that we should treat it as such. Those who insist on defending the idea of human exceptionalism are simply invested in maintaining human superiority and exploitation of animals and machines beyond what humans and law would otherwise accept as moral, if we were to respect other intelligences as equal and deserving of their own rights.
I’d also like to popularize the opinion that critical thinking, sentience, and intelligence don’t necessary make a species “better”. High intelligence is demonstrably helpful for world domination, but this is not necessarily an entirely objective improvement.
You think humans are the greatest? Have you met orangutans?
Personally, I think higher intelligence is better. I think it seems like it’s gone badly because we haven’t finished our progression yet, and we’re still a little too much primate. If we can keep from destroying the planet, we may get there.
I also don’t think we’ll be the last species to get to this point. We were just the first.
Really seems silly to me to focus so much on the distinctions between species. We all came from the same primordial soup of RNA on this planet (probably), and we’re all essentially just accumulated deviations & variations on those original building blocks. I believe in my bones that were still in the early stages of development, and this is no closer to the end result than an egg or a cocoon.