2021/10/20 by Jobst Landgrebe, Barry Smith, Landgrebe, Jobst +1 · 1 voice
Computer Science · Medicine · Neuroscience · Social Sciences · #Argument (complex analysis) #Artificial intelligence #Computability, Logic, AI Algorithms #Computer science #Embodied and Extended Cognition #Epistemology #Ethics and Social Impacts of AI #Impossibility #Law #Medicine #Philosophy #Political science #acm:68T01 #cs.AI #msc:68T01
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2111.07765
published in arXiv (Cornell University) (Cornell University)
arxiv created 2021/10/20 · openalex publication_date 2021/10/20 · arxiv updated 2021/11/16 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Since the noun phrase `artificial intelligence' (AI) was coined, it has been debated whether humans are able to create intelligence using technology. We shed new light on this question from the point of view of themodynamics and mathematics. First, we define what it is to be an agent (device) that could be the bearer of AI. Then we show that the mainstream definitions of `intelligence' proposed by Hutter and others and still accepted by the AI community are too weak even to capture what is involved when we ascribe intelligence to an insect. We then summarise the highly useful definition of basic (arthropod) intelligence proposed by Rodney Brooks, and we identify the properties that an AI agent would need to possess in order to be the bearer of intelligence by this definition. Finally, we show that, from the perspective of the disciplines needed to create such an agent, namely mathematics and physics, these properties are realisable by neither implicit nor explicit mathematical design nor by setting up an environment in which an AI could evolve spontaneously.