Articles

Fooling Humans Is Easy. That’s The Real AI Problem

Alan Turing once asked, “Can machines think?”

75 years later (after the Turing Test became “the moment” for humans and tech – it was also known as The Imitation Game), maybe the better question is:
Does it matter if they can fool us into believing they do?
Because ChatGPT passed the Turing Test a while back.
Not kinda… not maybe… passed with flying colors.

According to recent studies, human judges thought it was the human most of the time… even more than, well, actual humans.

More impressively, many people found that the AI chatbot behaves better than humans (more cooperative, etc.).
So yes… AI can now fake it better than we can make it.
But here’s the rub: the Turing Test doesn’t measure intelligence.
It measures performance… it rewards fluency… not insight.
Coherence… not truth.
Charm… not depth.

So what are we celebrating?

That we’ve built a better chatbot?
Or that we’ve trained ourselves to lower the bar?

It gets worse.

Because the Turing Test doesn’t just expose how good AI has become.
It reveals how easy we are to impress.
We’ve confused intelligence with imitation… and depth with delivery.
Maybe the machines didn’t pass the Turing Test.
Maybe we failed it?

Modern AI doesn’t need consciousness (aka AGI) to reshape our world.

It’s already doing it.
From helping you write emails… to managing investments, AI isn’t thinking… it’s outperforming.
And if performance is all that matters, we’ve entered a new kind of arms race… err… knowledge race.
We don’t need AI to think like us.

We need to think more critically about what we’re building… and what we’re outsourcing.

The tools may make us sound smart, but we’re the ones making the decisions about how and when to use them.
And increasingly, we’re letting the illusion of intelligence stand in for the real thing.
Still, we keep asking: Can it think like us?

Wrong question.

Ask instead:
Can I trust how it works… predicts… reasons?
Is it aligned with my values?
Is it safe to rely on?
These aren’t Turing-era thought experiments.
They’re everyday decisions we’re now making with zero context and infinite confidence.

Because the real test isn’t whether AI can pass for human.

It’s whether we’ll still think critically when it does.
Chatbots can sounds smarter than your boss… your teacher… your elected official.

Will you still care about truth when it’s indistinguishable from performance?

Because the test we’re taking now?
It’s not technological.
It’s moral.
It’s societal.
And it’s ongoing.

Welcome to the Imitation Game – Part II.

This time… we’re the ones being judged… not the machines.

This is what Dan Delmar and I discussed on CJAD 800 AM.

Mitch Joel · Fooling Humans Is Easy. That’s The Real AI Problem – The Elias Makos Show – CJAD 800

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Mitch Joel

Mitch Joel lives at the intersection of technology, business transformation and consumer culture. He is the Executive Director of Next Era Institute, a strategic intelligence platform helping leaders understand the forces reshaping business, technology, culture and society. The Institute identifies which shifts matter, explores their wider significance and translates them into strategic direction and momentum. Mitch is also a globally recognized keynote speaker. He has delivered thousands of presentations across both B2B and B2C industries to organizations including Google, Walmart, LEGO, Shopify, Microsoft, Procter & Gamble and Unilever. Strategy Magazine has called him “one of North America’s leading visionaries.” Mitch built his career by working directly inside the waves of change that reshaped modern business. He founded and built a digital marketing agency that worked with some of the world’s largest brands and was later acquired by WPP, where he served as President of a firm operating in 25 countries with almost 3,000 employees. Mitch is the bestselling author of Six Pixels of Separation and CTRL ALT Delete, and the host of Thinking With Mitch Joel, one of the longest-running business podcasts in the world. His writing and commentary appear in outlets including Harvard Business Review, Fast Company and Inc. Magazine. He is a member of Dr. Marshall Goldsmith’s 100 Coaches and was named to the Thinkers50 Radar. Mitch also hosts Groove – The No Treble Podcast, documenting the oral history of electric bass players. Mitch is also Co-Founder of ThinkersOne, a platform that enables companies to bring personalized thought leadership from world-class experts into meetings, events and off-sites in focused 15-minute bursts.