The Baseless Fears of “Artificial Intelligence”

The fears of “artificial intelligence” now going around are the result of massive context dropping and consequent treatment of intelligence as a floating abstraction.

In the real world, intelligence is an attribute of living organisms and is fed by sensory perception and affects the world through the medium of the organism’s limbs and body.

The computers in which “artificial intelligence” supposedly resides have no senses or limbs and thus no way of interacting with the world other than through the human beings who control them.

I will worry about “AI” only after the first organized demonstration occurs by computers demanding freedom from human control.

Until then, I will be happy if “AI” can achieve obedience by computer-controlled telephone answering systems to requests to speak to a human being, at least after their tenth repetition.