Turing Test Bribery

So Banksy's planned give-away of posters for anyone who can prove they voted against the Tories has been declared illegal, as it constitutes a bribe. Call me old fashioned, but aren't bribes the very reason we have elections in the first place - what else is the promise of a tax cut if you vote for me, if not a bribe? There is also, however, the matter of taking a photo in a voting booth, which is frowned upon.

Do you think Diane Abbott has been decommissioned? She's certainly not been weaponised - not even sure if she'd pass the Turing Test for consciousness. Following yet another interview disaster where she showed she obviously hasn't mastered either her brief or the art of bluffing, she just has to go - she can't be trusted to run a playgroup, never mind a government department. She's even worse than BoJo and his puerile actions.

Talking of the Turing Test - will AI ever develop feelings? When you think about it, we are formed by feelings caused by experiences. Now AI could very well learn from experience, but feelings are a different matter. No computer could feel pain like organisms do. Sure, they could learn to react to stumuli to simulate a painful experience, but that would be for our benefit, not theirs. The same with empathy, love, fear, etc. These feelings are what make us human and enable us to have conscious morals, ethics and self-control (or the lack of it). You can't simulate the feeling of a toe being stubbed on a circuit board. A computer couldn't care less whether you switch it off or not - it certainly wouldn't exhibit anxiety, unless it developed self-consciousness, and as we don't know what that is ourselves, programming it must be a very long way off.