William P : I can't think of any external test that can't be fooled by a giant look up table (ned block thought of this argument first).
A by definition requirement of a "general test" is that the systembuilder doesn't set it, and can't prepare for it as you indicate. He can't know whether the test for, say, his lego-constructing system is going to be building a machine, or constructing a water dam with rocks, or a game that involves fitting blocks into holes. His system must be able to adapt to any adjacent-domain activity whatsoever. That too is the point of the robot challenge test - the roboticists won't know beforehand what that planetary camp emergency is going to be.
("External testing", BTW, I suggest, should be a fundamental bottom-up part of the culture of all AGI and robot systembuilding. Human students don't get to set their own exams/ intelligence tests! It would be absurd).
What I think is so useful about the idea of a "general" test is that you *don't* try to define it specifically in advance - other than as an "adjacent domain" test. So it automatically applies to any would-be AGI whatsoever and at any level - whether it's say a snake-like system that only knows how to navigate through different terrains, or a complex would-be humanoid system that claims conversational powers. I think the latter is wildly unrealistic and unlikely to happen till the distant future, but it doesn't matter - the general test would still be applicable. And you would then have a focussed Turing test - if your system claims knowledge and can converse about one domain, then it should be able to learn and converse about a new but related domain.
If you had a general test as a focus, too, you wouldn't, I suggest, get AGI systembuilders wasting years of their lives on ill-defined projects, as has clearly happened and will otherwise continue to happen.
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