It is argued that society is a crucial factor in the construction of individual intelligence. In other words that it is important that intelligence is socially situated in an analogous way to the physical situation of robots. Evidence that this may be the case is taken from developmental linguistics, the social intelligence hypothesis, the complexity of society, the need for self-reflection and autism. The consequences for the development of artificial social agents is briefly considered. Finally some challenges for research into (...) socially situated intelligence are highlighted. (shrink)

The Turing Test, as originally specified, centres on theability to perform a social role. The TT can be seen as a test of anability to enter into normal human social dynamics. In this light itseems unlikely that such an entity can be wholly designed in anoff-line mode; rather a considerable period of training insitu would be required. The argument that since we can pass the TT,and our cognitive processes might be implemented as a Turing Machine, that consequently a TM that (...) could pass the TT could be built, isattacked on the grounds that not all TMs are constructible in a plannedway. This observation points towards the importance of developmentalprocesses that use random elements, but in these casesit becomes problematic to call the result artificial. This hasimplications for the means by which intelligent agents could bedeveloped. (shrink)