24/04/2024
What Computers Can’t Do
Thankfully we’ve had a month or two’s rest from being told AI could wipe out mankind or is coming to take away your job. Maybe, as always in these crazes, there’s a period of reflection underway.
But one way of looking at the latest claims for computers is to consider what they can’t do.
In the bath, I came up with this list of what computers can’t do:
* Imagination
* Originality
* Kindness
* Creativity
* Gut feeling
* Joy, Sadness, Ecstasy, Pride, Depression, Feeling of Ownership, Love
* Physical Pleasure
* Physical Pain
* Mental turmoil
* Appreciation of nature, animals, plants, flowers, sunsets,
* Surprise
* Ambition
* Sense of Failure
* Awe
* Sympathy
* Respect.
* Anger
While it is possible, for instance, to programme a computer to respond that its reaction to being kicked is anger, that is not the same as it actually feeling angry itself.
For as long as computers remain lacking in so many spheres of human experience, it seems absurd to equate computers with brains and say computers will take over one day.
You wouldn’t want the world ruled by an entity lacking all the capabilities in the list above.
Brains and computers are not the same thing. We should look a little leery at those who suggest they are
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