Is AI really intelligent?

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I think a thread on this topic will be interesting. My own position is that AI is intelligent, and that’s for a very simple reason: it can do things that require intelligence. That sounds circular, and in one sense it is. In another sense it isn’t. It’s a way of saying that we don’t have to examine the internal workings of a system to decide that it’s intelligent. Behavior alone is sufficient to make that determination. Intelligence is as intelligence does.

You might ask how I can judge intelligence in a system if I haven’t defined what intelligence actually is. My answer is that we already judge intelligence in humans and animals without a precise definition, so why should it be any different for machines? There are lots of concepts for which we don’t have precise definitions, yet we’re able to discuss them coherently. They’re the “I know it when I see it” concepts. I regard intelligence as one of those. The boundaries might be fuzzy, but we’re able to confidently say that some activities require intelligence (inventing the calculus) and others don’t (breathing).

I know that some readers will disagree with my functionalist view of intelligence, and that’s good. It should make for an interesting discussion.

801 thoughts on “Is AI really intelligent?”

  1. Trump at the UN:

    The United States also totally rejects any attempt to construct a globalist scheme to control for the artificial intelligence…

    It’s “the artificial intelligence” again, lol. And why stop at “globalist”? Isn’t it also a socialist, communist, dogmatist, terrorist, and dentist scheme?

    …the artificial intelligence being spoken of so much now, hereinafter officially called “super intelligence”, changing the name.

    Everyone will continue to call it by its actual name, except possibly for the US government if your babysitters can’t talk you out of issuing an inane executive order mandating the change.

    And that the use of the word artificial makes intelligence fake.

    That’s the same mistake Erik was making. The opposite of artificial isn’t “real”, it’s “natural”. Artificial sweeteners are real sweeteners. “Artificial” doesn’t mean “fake”.

    It makes it sound fake…

    Only to confused people.

    …and it is not fake.

    On that we agree, at least.

    From this point forward, all of United States documents and hopefully the world’s will be changed to use the much more accurate term “super” as opposed to”artificial”.

    Do you actually believe that the world will follow in your idiotic footsteps?

    So, it’s super intelligence. In other words, welcome to the new world of super intelligence- SI.

    The world of intelligence, super or otherwise, must feel disconcertingly alien to you.

    Let’s see if that goes. It sounds much better. It is much better. And it’s much more accurate. Let’s see if I have any power. Maybe I do and maybe I don’t. We’re going to find out pretty soon.

    Yes we are, and you’re not going to like the answer. The world is not going to be persuaded by a rant from a fat, orange, cloud-yelling president who is well past his expiration date.

    Super intelligence. Every major new technology brings challenges. And super intelligence is no exception. Yet the very same people who said we’ll all be dead in 12 years because of global warming. A name since reborn to “climate change” because the planet was cooling, not warming. and nobody was dead….

    Blah, blah, blah. Same crap that was in his Truth Social post that I looked at earlier.

    Bonus:

    There is no human right to illegal immigration, but there is a right to remain a sovereign nation, and we want to remain a sovereign nation, and so should you.

    Canada and Greenland do, dipshit.

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