Technically no, but we wouldn't be able to know otherwise. That gap is closing.
There's no technical basis for stating that.
A flip way of saying it is that we are evolving a process that exhibits the signs of what we call thinking. Why should we not say it is actually thinking?
How certain are you that in your brain there isn’t a process very similar?
I am simply asking a question. If anything I am only asserting the possibility that it is an imitation. I am more saying that there is no method to tell the difference on which possibility is true. Is it an imitation or is it not? The argument is ultimately pointless because you cannot prove it either way.
The only logical error is your assumptions and misinterpretation of what I said and meant.
But to carry your argument one step further, if there is no difference between imitation and the real thing, is there anything meaningful to be debated here? "Is it an imitation or is it not?" isn't even a valid question in that context. Imitation === The Real Thing.
I never said there is no difference. There is a difference, the difference is just not discernible or observable.
Let me give you an example. It’s like an unsolved murder. You find a victim who is stabbed, you know he was killed, we know someone killed him, but we don’t know who.
In the case of AI is the same. We know certain things about it, but if it produces output indistinguishable from AGI then we cannot discern whether it is an imitation or the actual thing. There does exist a difference but we cannot meaningfully determine it either way in the same way we can’t solve an unsolvable murder. But just because we can’t solve a murder does not mean there was no perpetrator.