STRAIGHT TALK
MARK BARNES: Machines adept at the art of algorithmic prediction are not intelligent
Machines are not clever and they never will be. There is no such thing as artificial intelligence, in fact, it may be an oxymoron. Perhaps it has to do with the definition of intelligence you subscribe to. I’m more on the side of Einstein, who said "intelligence is not knowledge, but imagination". I cannot subscribe to the notions that intelligence is a measure of the ability to acquire knowledge, or the capacity for understanding, or the application of logic or many such other tests of learning ability that so many dictionaries have adopted. I argue that intelligence is evidenced by original thought. The ability to find a solution to a challenge or plot a course to a destination without any prior knowledge of the subject confronted with — frontier science, inventions, the axioms of mathematics, not simply its learned application. Original thought, that’s intelligence — nothing artificial about that. If I were typing this within a predictive text application, I could not stop here a...
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.
Subscribe now to unlock this article.
Support BusinessLIVE’s award-winning journalism for R129 per month (digital access only).
There’s never been a more important time to support independent journalism in SA. Our subscription packages now offer an ad-free experience for readers.
Cancel anytime.
Questions? Email helpdesk@businesslive.co.za or call 0860 52 52 00. Got a subscription voucher? Redeem it now.