Todays AIs, such as chess computers, are just programs that have nothing to do with with general AI. Therefore, a consciouss, general AI can never exist, can it?
A. That line of reasoning is demonstrably flawed. This argument is of the form “we don’t have X today, therefore we shall never have X”. Try going back to the early sixties and claim that man will never walk on the moon. Try going back to 1900 and claim that man will never fly. We all know how that went, don’t we? The observation that today’s ‘intelligences’ are merely logical algorithms, is actually quite a sharp observation. But it is actually a non-issue. At this moment, the reverse engineering of the human brain is in full progress, and expected to be done around 2030. The human brain has several dozens of regions, of which about a dozen have been fully reverse engineered. The workings of these brain regions have been succesfully reproduced with the help of computer algorithms. What we have already demonstrated, is that we have the ability to understand our own intelligence. However, we are not yet at the point where we can use that knowledge in order to build generally intelligent
