Dear Dr. G.: I recently viewed a demonstration of an online learning product. The salesman said the product was so cutting edge it was using artificial intelligence. Apparently the software creates a lesson plan based on the learner's response to the previous question. Is this for real? I thought we were light-years away from artificial intelligence.
--Innately Intelligent in Indiana
Dear Innately: You have demonstrated admirable judgment in questioning this claim. Artificial intelligence (AI) is a term that has been bandied about lightly for years. In 1950, Alan Turing posed the Turing "test" for AI. The Turing test essentially is a tool to see whether a computer can imitate a human being. An interrogator would pose questions using text messages to a human and a computer. If the interrogator was unable to distinguish which subject was human and which was a computer, then it would not be unreasonable to call that computer intelligent. It seems to me the test really was more about the intelligence of the interrogator than the machine.
A more recent (albeit not very recent) example of artificial intelligence was thrust upon us with the 1968 release of Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey. HAL was the "intelligent" computer in that movie. Unfortunately, he also was mean spirited and vindictive. I don't know that artificial intelligence necessarily involves acting like a person as well as thinking like one. Sure, a great deal of human behavior could be characterized as nonintelligent. Would one expect an artificial intelligence to exhibit human behavior such as road rage?
Even more recently (2001) we were exposed to Steven Spielberg's Artificial Intelligence: AI. That movie is the story of a boy robot who learns to "love" his human parents. Interestingly, this actually was a Kubrick project he never got around to writing and directing but had been "developing" for some 20 years. But it's a Spielberg movie, and it has nothing to do with AI.
Why do we keep talking about movies? Maybe because artificial intelligence doesn't exist in the real world.
Let's assume the following as a reasonable definition of intelligence: Intelligence is a general mental capability that involves the ability to reason, plan, solve problems, think abstractly, comprehend ideas and language, and learn. Then let's say artificial intelligence is endowing a computer with the capabilities of human intelligence.
The original example--learning software that proceeded according to a decision tree--does not qualify as intelligence in my book. Although there may be circumstances to the contrary, humans do not reason in a linear decision tree manner. Most of what we call intelligence has nothing to do with decision-making. In fact, what makes human intelligence so unique is the manner in which humans make wrong decisions even in the face of indisputable logic. We call that free will.
The fundamental processes of a digital computer and the human brain are not similar. Digital computers deal with discrete bits of data and make logical decisions on those bits of data. Philosophers learned a long time ago syllogisms are not capable of expanding knowledge. Similarly, the basic logical operations a computer processor is capable of handling cannot define or replicate intelligence. We must not make the mistake of assuming because science is able to observe the firing of synapses in the brain, the process is similar to silicon processor operations.
It has been almost a century since Whitehead and Russell published Principia Mathematica. That work pretty much pushed the extremes of the envelope on what can be accomplished using logical inferences. Digital computing is based totally on logic and logical inferences. Until we are able to use a new paradigm for computing, we never will achieve AI. Fifty years ago, analog computers were a real possibility. The initial success of big iron crunching insurance statistics killed that. Maybe quantum computing truly will open the door to AI. Until then, just ignore the marketers and salesmen. AI is right where it belongs--science fiction movies.
