> The computer can’t think
I completely agree that our current software cannot think, at least in a complex way like humans do. But, our computers can execute Turing Complete programs. Is human logic beyond that? That will be an incredible discovery if we could assure that 'Human intelligence' > 'Turing Complete'. My bet is that such a thing does not exist.
If you take all computers, phones, etc. and you were able to run on them just one shared program. Is that not enough computing power to be able to think? My bet is that probably it is. Human brains are NOT infinitely complex.
> When they succeed, we will be back in the situation so lamented by Pollack: that of seeing an AI “breakthrough” or “major advance” as just more software, which is what it will be.
Or, we are going to discover that humans can't "think" either. That you can print, in a very big book, all the logic that makes us tick. And this makes sense. We have already discovered quite a lot of tricks that our visual system uses to identify images. And it is full of shortcuts and assumptions. And we cannot change that, if the illusion makes you think that a line is longer than the other, there is no mental power that allows us to see the truth even when we have the knowledge.
Machines are not magical, I agree with the main point of the article. It is just that humans are either. We are matter that can think, and that is a great thing but not magical.
I think therefore matter can think. I always liked this truism, as it removes quite a lot of magic from the idea of "thinking".