Turing's whole point was to show that it's an uninteresting question of definitions whether a machine can "think", like whether submarines can "swim" and airplanes can "fly". The only important part are observed outcomes and capabilities.

Yes, but just because language fails to make a distinction doesn't mean there isn't one.

> The only important part are observed outcomes and capabilities.

That's wishful thinking. Not even an engineer would say that. The stability of a state is just as important as achieving it. This is trivially and more intuitively demonstrated with other more down-to-earth identity statements such as "I'm a billionaire" and "the building is standing".

I think we can confidently say LLMs probabilistically achieve a perceived state that is remarkably similar to intelligence, but crumbles upon inspection and seeing it "in motion" so to speak. The same happens to AI-generated images.

I'm not sure why this sparks so much debate every time. If we're looking for a fountain of "realism", you're not going to beat reality and nature itself. All else will eventually have tells that they are not real.