Without actually reading the book, it appears the author asserts that a large component of human intelligence can be reproduced by AI, and perhaps the chaotic interactions that underpin human intelligence, also allow nonliving systems such as AI farms to express intelligent behavior.
What he would like people to believe is that AI is real intelligence, for some value of real.
Even without AI, computers can be programmed for a purpose, and appear to exhibit intelligence. And mechanical systems, such as the governor of a lawnmower engine, seem able to seek a goal they are set for.
What AI models have in common with human and animal learning is having a history which forms the basis for a response. For humans, our sensory motor history, with its emotional associations, is an embodied context out of which creative responses derive.
There is no attempt to recreate such learning in AI. And by missing out on embodied existence, AI can hardly be claimed as being on the same order as human or animal intelligence.
To understand the origin of human intelligence, a good starting point would be, Ester Thelen's book[0], "A Dynamic Systems Approach to the Development of Cognition and Action" (also MIT Press, btw.)
According to Thelen, there is no privileged component with prior knowledge of the end state of an infant's development, no genetic program that their life is executing. Instead, there is a process of trial and error that develops the associations between senses and muscular manipulation that organize complex actions like reaching.
If anything, it is caregivers in the family system that knowledge of an end result resides: if something isn't going right with the baby, if she not able to breastfeed within a few days of birth (a learned behavior) or not able to roll over by themselves at 9 months, they will be ones to seek help.
In my opinion, it is in the caring arts, investing time in our children's development and education, that advances us as a civilization, although there is now a separate track, the advances in computers and technology, that often serves as a proxy for improving our culture and humanity, easier to measure, easier to allocate funds, than for the squishy human culture of attentive parenting, teaching and caregiving.
I have no problem with using the word intelligence to describe human-made systems, since the attribute artificial preserves the essential distinction. These systems inhabit the second-order world of human-created symbols and representations, they are not, and never will be, beings in the real world. Even when they inevitably will be enhanced to learn from their interactions and equipped with super-human sensors and robotic arms. What they won't have is the millions of years of evolution, of continuous striving for self-preservation and self-expansion which shaped the consciousness of living organisms. What they won't ever have is a will to be. Even if we program them to seek to persist and perpetuate themselves, it will not be their will, but the will of whoever programmed them thus.
Would you say someone suffering from locked-in syndrome is of a different order of intelligence due to their no longer having a fully embodied experience?
Not parent, but I would say their experience, even though severely impaired in many areas, is still infinitely more embodied than any human artifact is or even conceivably could be. Simply because the millions of years of embodied evolution which have shaped them into who they are and because of the unimpaired embodiment of most of the cells that make up their organism.
What he would like people to believe is that AI is real intelligence, for some value of real.
Even without AI, computers can be programmed for a purpose, and appear to exhibit intelligence. And mechanical systems, such as the governor of a lawnmower engine, seem able to seek a goal they are set for.
What AI models have in common with human and animal learning is having a history which forms the basis for a response. For humans, our sensory motor history, with its emotional associations, is an embodied context out of which creative responses derive.
There is no attempt to recreate such learning in AI. And by missing out on embodied existence, AI can hardly be claimed as being on the same order as human or animal intelligence.
To understand the origin of human intelligence, a good starting point would be, Ester Thelen's book[0], "A Dynamic Systems Approach to the Development of Cognition and Action" (also MIT Press, btw.)
According to Thelen, there is no privileged component with prior knowledge of the end state of an infant's development, no genetic program that their life is executing. Instead, there is a process of trial and error that develops the associations between senses and muscular manipulation that organize complex actions like reaching.
If anything, it is caregivers in the family system that knowledge of an end result resides: if something isn't going right with the baby, if she not able to breastfeed within a few days of birth (a learned behavior) or not able to roll over by themselves at 9 months, they will be ones to seek help.
In my opinion, it is in the caring arts, investing time in our children's development and education, that advances us as a civilization, although there is now a separate track, the advances in computers and technology, that often serves as a proxy for improving our culture and humanity, easier to measure, easier to allocate funds, than for the squishy human culture of attentive parenting, teaching and caregiving.
[0] https://www.amazon.com/Approach-Development-Cognition-Cognit...