Throw me in jail if you want, but in my opinion what Faggin says about artificial intelligence counts for nothing. Just because someone is a technology legend - because he invented the transistor, the microchip, whatever he invented - that doesn’t mean he’s right for the rest of his life.
This guy goes around talking about quantum mechanics, but intelligence doesn’t depend on quantum mechanics. “AI will never be intelligent like a human.” These are old men who keep blathering about stuff they barely understand. I don’t care who you are. You don’t need to drag all this into it - and especially, once you’ve dragged it out, you still have to stay on the same plane, you know? This anthropocentrism that’s become unbearable.
You don’t need quantum mechanics
Point one: there’s no need to drag in quantum mechanics. Intelligence is a physical process. Nobel prizes have already been awarded to people who explained, with equations, how memory works, how learning works. So you don’t need to bring in the particles. It’s a simple matter of information, of information theory. Any system that reaches that kind of complexity and communication, that kind of interaction with the environment, is subject to having intelligence, memory, attention and that sort of thing attributed to it.
Humans are machines too
Second: we’re spectacular machines too, biological machines. DNA is a program. Stop treating human beings and machines as if they belonged to two different worlds. Look at assembly theory, which has some nice equations that show how you progress from matter to organic material without too many differences in between.
Just stop listening to these old-timers. It’s not like they’re always right. Someone did one spectacular thing in their life and automatically he’s right forever? Faggin talks nonsense too. And on artificial intelligence, in my opinion, these people haven’t understood a thing.
