Against Intelligence

Tim Crane (Central European University)

Alan Turing’s famous 1950 paper, Computing Machinery and Intelligence, is one of the foundational texts of the discipline of Artificial Intelligence (AI). But what does Turing actually say about intelligence? The surprising answer is - almost nothing. The word ‘intelligence’ occurs only twice in the paper, and ‘intelligent’ only once. So what was Turing really talking about, if not intelligence? And what has this got to do with today’s AI?

Join Professor Tim Crane, a leading British philosopher, as he answers these questions by defending the view that, contrary to what many theorists argue today, the concept of intelligence does not itself refer to a specific cognitive capacity. Instead, it mainly serves as a concept to evaluate and describe cognitive capacities. If this is right, Professor Crane argues the attempt to make progress in AI by replicating human intelligence is misguided, since in a sense there is no such thing to replicate. The fundamental question for AI is not ‘when can AI machines achieve human-level intelligence?’ but rather, ‘what tasks can computers actually perform?’.

In this Barry Taylor and David Lewis Philosophy Lecture, discover Professor Crane’s insights on how the philosophy of AI can help us tackle the real, practical problems that today's AI presents.