Final communication essay

I Think, Therefore I am .. Not

Many scientists, philosophers, and religious people groups often debate whether the ability to think is limited only to biological creatures such as animals and Homo sapiens, or if this ability can be exhibited by a machine. A. M. Turing posits in his work "Computing Machinery and Intelligence" that a machine is able to think in the same manner that a human does as evidenced through a test that he created, and named after himself: the Turing Test. This test is meant to show that a machine is capable of intelligence that is indistinguishable from that of a human’s by having both the machine and a human being answer questions that are asked by an interrogator who is in a separate room from them both. If the interrogator is unable to tell which is the person and which is the machine, then the machine is said to pass the test. Turing uses this test as proof of his belief that machines are capable of thought. However, when Turing’s article is looked at in respect to writings by other authors, his claim of a machine being capable of intelligence is contradicted by these other works. Steven Pinker’s work "An Instinct to Acquire an Art" describes how the ability of language acquisition is unique to the human species because it is an innate ability, and so it is not able to be taught as it is taught to the machine. In the article "Troublesome Language" in the textbook Understanding Human Communication by Adler & Rodman, the concept of words or phrases that can be interpreted in more than one way is examined. Misunderstandings can come from this type of communication which a machine would be unable to understand in context because a machine is not able to understand that one phrase can have two separate meanings, such as when a phrase or word is used in a metaphor or in a sarcastic way. These two articles discredit his belief that machines are indeed capable of human thought because a machine is not human and cannot understand language naturally.
Steven Pinker’s article "An Instinct to Acquire an Art" talks about language acquisition, and how it is an instinct that humans are born with as opposed to "a cultural artifact that [they] the way [they] learn to tell time or how the federal government works."(Pinker 42) The ability to learn and understand how language is used as well as structured cannot be taught to another creature or machine according to this statement. According to Pinker, "[l]anguage is a complex, specialized skill, which develops in the child spontaneously, without conscious effort or formal instruction"(Pinker 42), which means that a machine is not able to think of language in the same way that humans are able to. The ability to use language is not a characteristic of a machine such as a computer at its birth, and it is not until a programmer introduces all of the grammar and rules of language into the computers operating system that is able to use that language.
The fact that a machine cannot be "born" with the ability to learn language on its own could add to a couple of the arguments that are set against machines in "Computing Machinery and Intelligence." However the one that it seems to assist the most is Lady Lovelace’s Objection. Lady Lovelace’s Objection is that "[the machine] has no pretensions to originate anything. It can do whatever [programmers] know how to order it to perform."(Turing 83) The computer in Turing’s test is able to mimic human answers to questions posed by the interrogator about almost any topic, but that does not mean that the machine is intelligent. All that means is that the machine has vast amounts of information within its memory that has been placed there by it’s operators. The computer is not be able understand colloquial expressions such as idioms or slang, as well as being unable to use or understand sarcasm because it has not been programmed into it. The inability to comprehend or acquire the knowledge of how to interpret any of these different aspects of language contradicts Turing’s defense of the argument which is that "the evidence available to Lady Lovelace did not encourage her to believe that [machines] had [the ability to set up a conditioned reflex that could act as a way to learn]." (Turing 83) Until that conditioned reflex is introduced to the computers system, it knows nothing and is not able to learn anything on its own. That fact is a large argument against the opinion that a machine is capable of thought on the same par as a human being since a human is capable of learning without being told to do so.
As has already been talked about, a machine is not able to differentiate between a sentence spoken in earnest and a sentence that is meant as a sarcastic comment. Sarcasm is not able to be programmed into a computer, though Turing may argue that it is only because the evidence is unavailable to people at the moment that we do not think computers are capable of eventually learning it. However, in the absence of proof of what a machine is in fact capable of, we must assume that it in unable to learn the aspect of communication known as sarcasm. It is true that sometimes humans are oblivious to other’s use of sarcasm, especially as children the first time that sarcasm is introduced to their speech. The difference between the computers inability to understand sarcasm and a human is that the human has the natural ability to learn and assimilate sarcasm to it’s own speaking patterns. The computer is not able to learn about sarcasm simply from introducing it to the computer’s known world, which only includes the knowledge that has been feed into the computer.
In addition to sarcasm, the more logical fault with a computer being able to think in the same respect as a human being lies in its inability to allow something, such as slang, to mean more than one thing. Slang is, "language used by a group of people whose members belong to a similar subculture or other group."(Adler & Rodman 101) For example, when talking with friends, youths will use slang terms to explain or describe certain things such as events, ideas, or objects. If a teenager says to one of his friends, "That lion that we saw at the zoo was sick," it could mean one of two things. In the literal sense of the phrase, the lion that they had seen at the zoo was physically ill. This is more than likely how the computer would interpret this sentence because in the English language, sick means to be ill. However, in slang terms, sick is used as another word for cool, which is itself a slang term although it is far more common to both adults as well as children in it’s meaning. Many slang terms used are not common knowledge, and instead are shared by groups of friends or colleagues of the people who use the terms. The ability to quickly decipher a slang term’s meaning is not shown in computers because they do not have the common knowledge of a human that allows the computer to identify that the slang term can not possibly be meant literally in the context it is in, and so it must be slang for something else. The computer would not be able to pick up on this different use of a word that logically has no reason to be placed where it is.
Turing’s reasoning for machines being capable of the same definition of thought as human beings is thorough when read within his own article, but when cross-examined with articles by readings from other authors, it is contradicted. A machine is not "born" with the innate ability to learn language as a human child is. It is instead unable to even form words or sounds until it is programmed to do so, which supports the argument that it can only do "whatever [the programmers] know how to order it to perform."(Turing 83) Since language acquisition is natural in a human and not in a machine, it can be said that a machine is obviously not capable of the same ability to think as a human because it is not human itself. A human’s ability to think allows them to adapt or assimilate new language constantly, which a computer does not have without being programmed to display a trait that resembles the learning ability. That’s not to say that the machine would be incapable of mimicking certain aspects of speech that a human being would have, but it will not be able to learn about language on its own. This lack of natural ability to learn and interpret language is evidence of a fault in Turing’s belief that machines are able to think in the same manner as humans so well that they are unable to be told apart.