Artificial general intelligence (AGI), or strong AI—that is, artificial intelligence that aims to duplicate human intellectual abilities—remains controversial and out of reach. The difficulty of scaling up AI’s modest achievements cannot be overstated.

However, this lack of progress may simply be testimony to the difficulty of AGI, not to its impossibility. Can a computer possibly think? Theoretical linguists suggest that debating this question is pointless, as it’s essentially arbitrary whether to extend the common usage of the word think to machines. Chomsky claims there’s no factual question as to whether such decisions are right or wrong—just as there’s no question over saying that airplanes fly or not saying that ships swim. However, this view may oversimplify the matter.

The important question is, could it ever be appropriate to say that computers think, and if so, under what conditions?

Some authors suggest the Turing test as a measure of intelligence. However, the mathematician and logician Alan Turing himself noted that a truly intelligent computer might still fail his test if it couldn’t convincingly imitate a human being.

In fact, AI has no clear definition of intelligence to offer—not even in a subhuman context. Rats are considered intelligent, but what exactly must an AI accomplish before it reaches even a rat’s level of understanding? Without a clear criterion for intelligence, it’s challenging to objectively evaluate an AI’s progress.

1. AI’s lack of a clear intelligence benchmark allows for subjective interpretations.
2. When AI achieves a new goal, critics often dismiss it as “not intelligence.”
3. Marvin Minsky suggests intelligence describes problem-solving processes we don’t yet fully understand.
4. Minsky likens intelligence to “unexplored regions”—it disappears as soon as we uncover it.

Illustration depicting the concept of Artificial Intelligence.

Ultimately, the debate over AI and intelligence continues, raising fundamental questions about true understanding and cognitive ability in machines.

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