Or as Dijkstra puts it: “asking whether a machine can think is as dumb as asking if a submarine can swim”.
Alan Turing puts it similarly, the question is nonsense. However, if you define “machine” and “thinking”, and redefine the question to mean: is machine thinking differentiable from human thinking; you can answer affirmatively, theoretically (rough paraphrasing). Though the current evidence suggests otherwise (e.g. AI learning from other AI drifts toward nonsense).
Alan Turing puts it similarly, the question is nonsense. However, if you define “machine” and “thinking”, and redefine the question to mean: is machine thinking differentiable from human thinking; you can answer affirmatively, theoretically (rough paraphrasing). Though the current evidence suggests otherwise (e.g. AI learning from other AI drifts toward nonsense).
For more, see: Computing Machinery and Intelligence, and Turing’s original paper (which goes into the Imitation Game).