Subjective Intelligence :: Technology Technological Essays

Subjective Intelligence The benignant aspiration to become intelligent railway cars has appe bed in legend and literature for thousands of old age, from stories of Pygmalion to the tales of the Jewish Golem. After thousands of years of fantasy, the appearance of the digital computer, with its native, charitable-like ability to process symbols, made it seem that the myth of man-made erudition could become reality. However, when go forth we know when we have reached that vital point when a machine becomes a mind? What is it that distinguishes real scholarship from the mere processing of symbols and interpretation of stimuli? When is intelligence achieved? To answer these questions one ask a concrete interpretation of intelligence in order to machinate the criteria necessary to evaluate the intellectual capability of machines and men.Websters dictionary defines intelligence as, The ability to learn and understand.1 This is a very broad definition and aloneows fo r as much interpretation as the concept we are trying to define. Furthermore, this definition fails to account for the full range of cognition that the human brain is overt of. Websters definition does not account for the critical aspects of emotion, free will and personality. A second definition given by the Encarta encyclopedia is the usual mental capability to reason, solve problems, think abstractly, learn and understand sunrise(prenominal) material and profit from past experience.2 All of these are traits of the human mind. therefrom it would follow that if a machine does not possess one of these human characteristics it cannot be considered intelligent. Furthermore, it necessitates that an intelligent machine must be human-like. If this is so, a machine could then(prenominal) be described with the same qualifying words we usage to describe a human. Is a machine then bright, smart, stupid or clever? If we define intelligence as a likeness to the human mind, the human char acteristics that Webster failed to capture in its definition, are encompassed in a adjourn humanistic definition of intelligence. However, where Webster and Encarta are too broad, the humanistic definition whitethorn be too tight. It is commonly agreed that humans are all intelligent beings, however it does not necessarily follow that humans are the only intelligent beings. Therefore by defining intelligence in such a way one could be ruling come out of the closet different forms of intelligence that are intelligent by nature, but then not by definition.