How convincing is the claim that some machines could be persons?

A test called the ‘Turing test’ which is a test of a machine’s ability to express human-like nature. This test is performed by a human judge engaging in conversation with a human and a machine with intelligent behaviour that is hard to distinguish between a machine and a human being. The judge is unaware of which participant is the human or the machine, and if the judge cannot tell which participant is the human then the machine is said to have passed the test. This is linked to the idea of if machines could be persons as, if even an experienced human judge cannot tell the difference between a machine and a human when engaging in conversation, then the possibility that a machine can be considered as persons is high

Strong arguments exist which contribute to the idea of why we shouldn’t consider machines as persons:  The fact that no machine has ever exhibited all of the characteristics required for personhood, dismisses the belief that machines could be recognised as persons. Although, technology is advancing rapidly and machines such as ASIMO have displayed very high intelligence in recognising objects etc. the argument that machines do not actually understand things the same way humans do still exists. This is due to humans using thought processes, and ‘thinking’ to understand basic things, while machines must be programmed to do this and is very limited. Other characteristics like rationality or reflection are argued to be impossible for a machine to have as a characteristic, as many people believe a machine cannot think for itself without algorithms and programming. Moreover, a computer would recognise the syntax of a sentence as correct if it is grammatically correct, however it is sometimes meaningless as the semantics of a sentence may not make sense; relating to how computers/ machines can generate syntax but not semantically correct sentences.

There are some problems with the Turing test as evidence of the potential of machines to be considered as persons. Firstly, the Turing test does not even test whether machines can think intelligently; it only tests the idea of how good a machine is at simulating intelligence rather than the emulation of human-like intelligence. Contrasting the argument that the Turing test proposes, an experiment called ‘(Searle’s) The Chinese room’ exists to contrast the potential of this text to recognise a machine as a person. Searle argued that the Turing test is poor evidence of a machine’s ability to perform human-like behaviour as machines are simply manipulating the sentences that had been said to them, to give a reply without true understanding of what had been said. Therefore, Searle believed machines could not be said to be thinking in the same manner as humans. The Chinese room test is performed by a human participant who knows only English being placed in a room and following English instructions for manipulating Chinese characters which result in to the participant appearing to be able to communicate in Chinese with the people outside the room. This proves what Searle says about the machines not understanding what they are processing and displaying as human behaviour, as it is just manipulating language given to them through instructions which the human participant did in ‘The Chinese room’.

In conclusion, although the fact that the potential for machines to be considered at least diminished persons exists, due to the advancement of technology which has produced machines like ASIMO which can recognise objects and has a significantly strong learning ability etc. or the form of communication that machines express through Binary code; I still believe that machines cannot be considered persons without satisfying all the essential characteristics of personhood and not imitating it through simulation, it can only be recognised as a person through displaying strong human-like behaviour.