The Generalized Turing Test: A Foundation for Comparing Intelligence

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Mitropolsky, Daniel, Hong, Susan S., Neumarker, Riccardo, Rimoldi, Emanuele, Poggio, Tomaso
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
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author Mitropolsky, Daniel
Hong, Susan S.
Neumarker, Riccardo
Rimoldi, Emanuele
Poggio, Tomaso
author_facet Mitropolsky, Daniel
Hong, Susan S.
Neumarker, Riccardo
Rimoldi, Emanuele
Poggio, Tomaso
contents We introduce the Generalized Turing Test (GTT), a formal framework for comparing the capabilities of arbitrary agents via indistinguishability. For agents A and B, we define the Turing comparator A $\geq$ B to hold if B, acting as a distinguisher, cannot reliably distinguish between interactions with A (instructed to imitate B) and another instance of B. This yields a dataset- and task-agnostic notion of relative intelligence. We study the comparator's structure, including conditions under which it is transitive and therefore induces an ordering over equivalence classes, and we define and analyze variants with querying, bounded interaction, and fixed distinguishers. To complement the theory, we instantiate the framework on a collection of modern models, empirically evaluating pairwise indistinguishability across thousands of trials. The resulting comparisons exhibit a stratified structure consistent with existing rankings, hinting that the proposed framework yields meaningful empirical orderings. Our results position indistinguishability as a unifying lens for reasoning about intelligence, suggesting a foundation for evaluation and, potentially, training objectives that are inherently independent of fixed datasets or benchmarks.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2605_10851
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle The Generalized Turing Test: A Foundation for Comparing Intelligence
Mitropolsky, Daniel
Hong, Susan S.
Neumarker, Riccardo
Rimoldi, Emanuele
Poggio, Tomaso
Artificial Intelligence
Computation and Language
Machine Learning
We introduce the Generalized Turing Test (GTT), a formal framework for comparing the capabilities of arbitrary agents via indistinguishability. For agents A and B, we define the Turing comparator A $\geq$ B to hold if B, acting as a distinguisher, cannot reliably distinguish between interactions with A (instructed to imitate B) and another instance of B. This yields a dataset- and task-agnostic notion of relative intelligence. We study the comparator's structure, including conditions under which it is transitive and therefore induces an ordering over equivalence classes, and we define and analyze variants with querying, bounded interaction, and fixed distinguishers. To complement the theory, we instantiate the framework on a collection of modern models, empirically evaluating pairwise indistinguishability across thousands of trials. The resulting comparisons exhibit a stratified structure consistent with existing rankings, hinting that the proposed framework yields meaningful empirical orderings. Our results position indistinguishability as a unifying lens for reasoning about intelligence, suggesting a foundation for evaluation and, potentially, training objectives that are inherently independent of fixed datasets or benchmarks.
title The Generalized Turing Test: A Foundation for Comparing Intelligence
topic Artificial Intelligence
Computation and Language
Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.10851