Today, the term “artificial intelligence” springs up on all sides. Books, videos, and articles alternately praise it as a harbinger of freedom and prosperity or bemoan it as the first rumblings of a looming apocalypse. The term “AI” is used sweepingly and somewhat carelessly to refer to entities as diverse as an automated tool in design software to a chatbot like ChatGPT and the fabled “AGI”—artificial generalized intelligence—which will allegedly be able to think with human-like flexibility across a limitless range of topics and problems. All this makes for a fog of confusion around the concept of machine intelligence.
Can a computer have intelligence in the way that a human being does? In what ways does a machine mind replicate a human mind–and what are its limitations?
