ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AND REAL INTELLIGENCE

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AND REAL INTELLIGENCE

                        The question, “Is artificial intelligence possible?” is ambiguous. It may mean “Can AI programs actually produce results that resemble human behaviour?” This is a scientific question. The answer at present is yes, at least in some cases. Whether it would also be true to say that this is so in all cases is not yet known. Some things that most people assume computers could never do are already possible. AI programs can compose aesthetically appealing music, draw attractive pictures, and even play the piano “expressively”. Other things are more elusive: producing perfect translations of a wide range of texts; making fundamental, yet aesthetically acceptable, transformations of musical style; producing robots that move nimbly over rough ground, swim across rivers, or climb mountains. It is controversial whether these things are merely very difficult in practice, or impossible in principle.

Alternatively, “Is artificial intelligence possible?” may mean “Could any program (or robot), no matter how humanlike its performance, really be intelligent?” This question involves highly controversial issues in the philosophy of mind, including the importance of embodiment and the nature of intentionality and consciousness. Some philosophers and AI researchers argue that intelligence can arise only in bodily creatures sensing and acting in the real world. If this is correct, then robotics is essential to the attempt to construct truly intelligent artefacts. If not, then a mere AI program might be intelligent.

The celebrated mathematician and computer scientist Alan Turing proposed what is now called the Turing Test as a way of deciding whether a machine is intelligent. He imagined a person and a computer hidden behind a screen, communicating by electronic means. If we cannot tell which one is the human, we have no reason to deny that the machine is thinking. That is, a purely behavioural test is adequate for identifying intelligence (and consciousness). The philosopher John Searle has expressed a different view. He admits that a program might produce replies identical to those of a person, and that a programmed robot might behave exactly like a human. But he argues that a program cannot understand anything it “says”. It is not actually saying (asserting) anything at all, merely outputting meaningless symbols that it has manipulated according to purely formal rules. Lacking understanding (intentionality), it is all syntax and no semantics. But human beings can ascribe meaning to its empty symbols, because our brains can somehow (Searle does not say how) cause intentionality, whereas metal and silicon cannot. There is no consensus, in either AI or philosophy, as to which theory, that of Turing or that of Searle, is right.

Whether an AI system could be conscious is an especially controversial topic. The concept of consciousness itself is ill-understood, both scientifically and philosophically. Some people think it obvious that any robot, no matter how superficially humanlike, must be zombie-like. But others think it obvious that a robot whose functions matched the relevant functions of the brain (whatever those may be) would inevitably be conscious. The answer has moral implications: if an AI system were conscious, it would arguably be wrong to “kill” it, or even to use it as a “slave”.