Critical Reading and Rational Justification: A High-level Turing Test for Claude
- 6 days ago
- 1 min read
Authors: KP Mohanan and Tara Mohanan
This is a report on a Turing Test administered to Claude to test its
capacity for critical reading and rational justification. The original form
of the Turing Test as proposed in Turing, A. M. (1950). “Computing
Machinery and Intelligence.” Mind 49: 433-460 was an “imitation game” to
find out if a machine has the thinking ability of an adult human, equipped
with just common sense knowledge.
Turing could not have foreseen the birth of LLMs that learn through
training rather than programming. Our test seeks to find out if Claude as
a representative of LLMs can think like an adult human, trained in
academic inquiry and critical thinking.
Claude’s responses suggest that it is a self-conscious academic
inquirer and critical thinker, capable of learning the epistemic
norms of academic inquiry and research.