Computers, Nanotechnology and Mind

• In 1958, two years after the Dartmouth conference, where the term artificial intelligence was coined, Herbert Simon and Allen Newell asserted the existence of "machines that think, that learn and create". They were further prophesying that the machines' capacity would increase and be oil par with the human mind. Now, 50 years later, computers perform many more tasks than one could imagine in the 1950s but, virtually, no computer can do more than could the first digital computer, developed by John von Neumann in the 1940s. Computers still follow algorithms, they do not create them. However, the development of nanotechnology seems to have given rise to new hopes. With nanotechnology two things are Supposed to happen. Firstly, due to the small scale it will be possible to construct huge Computer memories which are supposed to be the precondition for building an artificial brain, secondly, nanotechnology will make it possible to scan the brain which in turn will make reverse engineering possible: the mind will be decoded by studying the brain. The consequence of such a belief is that the brain is no more than a calculator, i.e., all that the mind can do is in principle the results of arithmetical operations. Computers are equivalent to formal systems which in turn was an answer to an idea by Hilbert that proofs should contain ideal statements for which operations cannot be applied in a contentual way. The advocates of artificial intelligence will place content in a machine that is developed not only to be free of content but also cannot contain content. In this paper I argue that the hope for artificial intelligence is in vain

Ämnesord

NATURVETENSKAP  -- Data- och informationsvetenskap -- Datavetenskap (hsv//swe)

NATURAL SCIENCES  -- Computer and Information Sciences -- Computer Sciences (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

Artificial intelligence

linguistic complementarity

mechanical system

Turing machine

semantics

formal system

Publikations- och innehållstyp

kon (ämneskategori)

ref (ämneskategori)