The fears of “artificial intelligence” now going around are the result of massive context dropping and consequent treatment of intelligence as a floating abstraction.
In the real world, intelligence is an attribute of living
organisms and is fed by sensory perception and affects the world through the
medium of the organism’s limbs and body.
The computers in which “artificial intelligence” supposedly resides
have no senses or limbs and thus no way of interacting with the world other than
through the human beings who control them.
I will worry about “AI” only after the first organized demonstration
occurs by computers demanding freedom from human control.
Until then, I will be happy if “AI” can achieve obedience by
computer-controlled telephone answering systems to requests to speak to a human
being, at least after their tenth repetition.
