PLEASE don’t use the phrase “Artificial Intelligence,” or A.I., if you can avoid it.

It is misleading.

Machines don’t have intelligence, which is essentially an immaterial faculty. Computers process information fed to them by human beings and use mechanical power to do it. They can’t reason. Machines can’t think.

See Peggy Hall’s Substack post on this subject in connection with “Stargate A.I.,” the ridiculously-named, high-tech program (it sounds like a video game) introduced last week by Trump. She writes:

Let’s get one thing straight—I really don’t like the term “AI.” It’s not just a personal pet peeve; I flat-out reject the idea of “artificial intelligence.” And don’t even get me started on this whole “machine learning” nonsense. Machines don’t learn—they get programmed by humans. We’re not machines, we’re people. And our brains are not computers. They are brains. Human brains. And it’s the human brains that program these computers, so there. I only refer to it as “AI” because it’s the phrase everyone uses, but I do not care for the term at all.

I’m also bothered by the idea these tech gurus are promoting that AI can somehow solve problems that humans can’t. This technology is being elevated while minimizing the incredible creation that we are—humans, God’s greatest creation. I entirely reject that notion of computers being “better than” humans.

The further implication of the phrase “artificial intelligence” is that the human mind is a machine — and that human beings in their essence and powers are merely machines. Some philosophers have viewed things this way, but then to them we have no more inherent dignity or destiny than toasters or satellites. It is definitely to the advantage of billionaires with utopian visions, whether well-intended or not, to adopt this view.

Please follow and like us: