Artificial intelligence is defined as a system that ôsimulates intelligence by attempting to reproduce the types of physical connections that occur in animal brainsö (Artificial 1). While there has been a great deal of progress in robotics in an effort to simulate human intelligence in artificial systems, I do not believe robots will ever become truly intelligent in the human sense.
I have a number of reasons for believing robots will never become truly intelligent. The chief reason is that we still do not know with absolute certainty how cognition, intelligence, and thinking work in the human brain. Without this knowledge, recreating it in robots is impossible.
While there are robots now widely used that mimic human abilities, such capabilities are limited and simple, such as handling objects or ôseeingö based on sensors. Sensor robotics enables robots to ôadapt and respond to their environment and the task in handö (Winchester 20). However, there is a far cry from original thought or cognition and merely responding to a preprogrammed software or computer code.
While we know how humans are made, we still have many unanswered questions about how humans function. How humans act can be recreated by robotics but not how humans function. As one scientists maintains about robotics and human intelligence, ôThe hurdle is we do not know ourselvesö (Toward N). As such, without knowledge of how we think we cannot recreate this capability in an artificial system.
For the above reasons, while robots may simulate human actions they will never be able to attain true intelligence, at least not as long as we have little idea about the true nature of human intelligence.
ôArtificial Intelligence.ö Webopedia. Viewed on Mar 1, 2005: http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/a/artificial_intelligence.html, 1.
ôToward a More Human Robot.ö Business Week. Nov 24, 2004, p. N.
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