What Is Artificial Intelligence?
What Exactly Is Artificial Intelligence?
The term "artificial intelligence" is now used so often to describe anything intelligent concerning computers that the phrase has lost much of its original meaning. In the mid-1950s, computer researcher John McCarthy coined this term to describe a specific research area. The research of artificial intelligence was and is focused on understanding how to program computers to complete tasks that, when performed by humans, were thought to require intelligence. This definition essentially describes the broad aim of the research, but it has since opened up a number of questions in the areas of ethics, humanism, and psychology:
- Could a highly advanced computer be a person?
- What does it even mean to be a person?
- Is a mind necessary to be a person?
- What even is a mind?
- Can a computer have a mind?
- If a computer can have a mind, should it be treated as a person?
- If a computer cannot have a mind, what does it lack?