Can A Machine Display General Intelligence?
Is it possible to create a machine that can solve all the problems humans solve using their intelligence? This is the question that AI researchers are most interested in answering. It defines the scope of what machines will be able to do in the future and guides the direction of AI research. It only concerns the behavior of machines and ignores the issues of interest to psychologists, cognitive scientists and philosophers; to answer this question, it does not matter whether a machine is really thinking (as a person thinks) or is just acting like it is thinking.
The basic position of most AI researchers is summed up in this statement, which appeared in the proposal for the Dartmouth Conferences of 1956:
- Every aspect of learning or any other feature of intelligence can be so precisely described that a machine can be made to simulate it.
Arguments against the basic premise must show that building a working AI system is impossible, because there is some practical limit to the abilities of computers or that there is some special quality of the human mind that is necessary for thinking and yet cannot be duplicated by a machine (or by the methods of current AI research). Arguments in favor of the basic premise must show that such a system is possible.
The first step to answering the question is to clearly define "intelligence."
Read more about this topic: Philosophy Of Artificial Intelligence
Famous quotes containing the words machine, display and/or general:
“The momentary charge at Balaklava, in obedience to a blundering command, proving what a perfect machine the soldier is, has, properly enough, been celebrated by a poet laureate; but the steady, and for the most part successful, charge of this man, for some years, against the legions of Slavery, in obedience to an infinitely higher command, is as much more memorable than that as an intelligent and conscientious man is superior to a machine. Do you think that that will go unsung?”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“I mistrust the satisfaction which makes a display of the possession of Infinity; that is called fatuity in philosophic terms.”
—Edgar Quinet (1803–1875)
“The general so likes your music, that he desires you for love’s sake to make no more noise with it.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)