[MD] Intellectual Level

[Arlo Bensinger]

[DMB]
Hubert Dreyfus has been a critic of artificial intelligence research 
since the 1960s.

[Arlo]
Someone had mentioned this before (Ian?), but I think the construct 
of "artificial intelligence" is a misnomer; intelligence is 
intelligence. Period. The idea of "artificial intelligence" more 
likely points to a deliberate simulacra, a model of something that we 
know isn't quite the same, but contains the surface features and 
similarities an "intelligence" may exhibit in a particular context.

Since the Watson computer on Jeopardy has made news, and a lot of 
people seem to think this is evidence of "intelligence" (Watson's 
intelligence as a distinct entity, not the intelligence of the 
programmers who authored the myriad of algorythems Watson runs upon), 
I'll use it as a quick example.

Within the context of the Jeopady event, Watson does appear to 
display enough similarity to human players that it is a good model, 
or artificial representation, of intelligence *in that context*. The 
problem is, if we expand the context, Watson immediately starts to 
fail. Watson can't choose NOT to play, for example, and decide to 
play chess instead, or be distracted because it is flipping through 
its catalog of images because something reminded it of a picture it 
had seen before and it wanted to see that picture again, or even 
sleep, instead. Watson cannot laugh at an unintended funny answer 
such as Ken Jenning's famous "What is a 'ho?" response to "This term 
for a long-handled gardening tool can also mean an immoral pleasure 
seeker."  (A rake)

This is not to say computers (or some form of non-biological based 
entity) will never achieve intelligence (used more to mean 
"self-awareness" or "consciousness"). Its just that such a thing has 
yet to evolve, and when/if it does it won't be "made" by us, it will 
emerge as our own self-awareness emerged in our remotest biological 
evolution (owing perhaps as Tomasello argues to a realization of 
"shared attention" in our preverbal, prelinguistic, presocial 
ancestors (of course such a recognition is what "set off" the social 
level, IMHO).