Reader Edward Sisson writes to say,
Denyse says in her 2006 article that
“Then there was artificial intelligence (AI). Remember, this is supposed to be the “age of spiritual machines,” when computers are becoming indistinguishable from humans. In reality, the human mind works quite differently from a computer, and simply increasing computing power does not produce characteristic human qualities. AI enthusiast Kenneth Silber complains, “This is a disappointing state of affairs.” It sure is, if you are HAL or Deeper Blue.”
[No computer has become inherently smarter than its programmers, for the same reasons as characters in a novel do not have more insight than the author. ]”
He adds,
The current issue of MIT’s Technology Review (Nov/Dec 2017) is titled “The Artificial Intelligence Issue.” The lead article, beginning page 28, by James Somers, is titled “Is AI Riding a One-Trick Pony? The AI boom has been based on 30-year-old ideas. Without new ones, the revolution is over.” This discusses the technical designs forAi computers, and the limitations on functionality due to those designs. At pages 79-86, the former director of the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab, Rodney Brooks, discusses the many limitations of AI, and why predictions of vast future AI power and unjustified.
The same issue, in the MIT News section at page 11 (perhaps only alumni get this portion) has an appreciation on former MIT president (1980-1990) and chair (1990-1997) Paul Gray, who died in Sept. 2017. It reports that as President, “Gray is remembered … for launching a formal review of the undergraduate curriculum that led to the addition of biology as a core requirement ….” By this means did evolution become a requirement at MIT, which it was not when I was there and graduated in 1977.
See also: The end of promissory materialism? For example, no computer has become inherently smarter than its programmers, for the same reasons as characters in a novel do not have more insight than the author.