Intelligent Rocks

Raise your hand if you believe artificial intelligence actually exists right now on this planet. Thank you, and you can put your hand down now. Now raise your hand if you think a non-living, non-animate thing can be intelligent. Any persons who raised their hand the first time but not the second have committed a logical error. They maintain a non-(logically) consistent position and must go to bed without supper (unless you/they believe a computer existing on the planet today is an animate, living thing. I hope most of us would think that person/you is crazy). I could have illustrated this point in many different ways but it is quite easy to show that belief in AI must equate to belief in intelligence (or at least the possibility of) intelligence for non-living, non animate things. The alternative is to believe that a computer/computer system existing on the planet at this very moment today is alive. And that this computer is an animate, living being that was created/born/emerged at some point, and now sits in your phone or in your city’s street traffic light system helping you find the nearest McDonalds and making sure you hit every red light on the way. I am not prepared to believe in intelligent rocks. Why are you?

I know what you’re thinking, and to answer your question, yes I am a quite handsome, lol. Seriously, you are actually thinking come on bro, computers aren’t rocks, they’re totally different things. Nice argument and I guess I can buy it, right up until the very end, you lost me there, computers aren’t rocks and you will never convince me of that. First, thanks for thinking, second, I agree 100%, computers are not rocks. It really makes no difference because the rock could be any, non living, non animate thing in the entire universe. It could be a subatomic particle, a quark perhaps, or a star, or a force of nature like gravity. As long as it is not alive it serves the exact same purpose in this example. Many believers in AI have long recognized this problem and embraced the atypical position logic forces them to adopt. Thus we have writers like my good friend Giulio Prisco and others proposing various theories of inanimate intelligence from quantum vacuum superintelligence to intelligent galaxies. (apologies Giulio as I recognize I am completely butchering your positions and I mean no disrespect. I simply am not equipped with the advanced knowledge and training in math and physics required to fully comprehend your theoretical framework). It is strange that these unusual theories always involve quantum physics. Weird how in the past similar theories involved Newtonian physics. In any event I am not yet prepared to embrace the idea of inanimate, non living intelligence and I don’t think it is a stretch to say the vast, vast majority of persons “living” on the planet today are not either. Given the number of people who claim AI exists right now there are an awful lot of hypocrites out there.