My long-standing problem with some critics of artificial intelligence (and the Turing test) has been that it operates from assumption is that the only way to be intelligent is the way the human brain works. For that matter, the idea that there is an intelligent/not intelligent threshold strikes me as fallacious and simply a way to bolster hopes of human exceptionalism (e.g., dogs are not unintelligent life, they are just less intelligent life). I'm personally optimistic that we will generate artificial intelligences long before we replicate the wiring and behavior of the human brain.
Aaron Diaz of Dresden Codak posted a great satire of the anti-AI position in his "Artificial Flight and Other Myths, a reasoned examination of AF by top birds":
Even if we were capable of completely achieving the above, how would weThis is certainly the most entertaining use of metaphor to dismantle an opposing viewpoint that I have seen since Mark Crislip's "Alternative Flight" send-up of the complementary and alternative medicine industry.
ever know if it was a true bird? Where does flight really reside? We
may build a functioning, flapping wing, but what if the essence of
flight is deeper, hidden within the cells or elsewhere? We would only
succeed in making a hollow doll that only gives the appearance of
flight. If this is the end result, is it a worthwhile investment of our
time and resources?
I would certainly agree that there is no intelligent/non-intelligent threshold, but equally to produce machine intelligence, then it would relevant only within the context of being a machine. Just as intelligence for dogs is relevant to being a dog. So all efforts to create a human-like intelligence in machines is simulation and nothing more.