College professors are going back to paper exams and handwritten essays to fight students using ChatGPT::The growing number of students using the AI program ChatGPT as a shortcut in their coursework has led some college professors to reconsider their lesson plans for the upcoming fall semester.
Where does that come from? A better gauge for intelligence is whether someone or something is able to resolve a problem that they did not encounter before. And arguably all current models completely suck at that.
I also think the word “AI” is used quite a bit too liberal. It confuses people who have zero knowledge on the topic. And when an actual AI comes along we will have to make up a new word because “general artificial intelligence” won’t be distinctive enough for corporations to market their new giant leap in technology….
I would suggest the textbook Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach by Russell and Norvig. It’s a good overview of the field and has been in circulation since 1995. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_Intelligence:_A_Modern_Approach
Here’s a photo, as an example of how this book approaches the topic, in that there’s an entire chapter on it with sections on four approaches, and that essentially even the researchers have been arguing about what intelligence is since the beginning.
But all of this has been under the umbrella of AI. Just because corporations have picked up on it, doesn’t invalidate the decades of work done by scientists in the name of AI.
My favourite way to think of it is this: people have forever argued whether or not animals are intelligent or even conscious. Is a cat intelligent? Mine can manipulate me, even if he can’t do math. Are ants intelligent? They use the same biomechanical constructs as humans, but at a simpler scale. What about bacteria? Are viruses alive?
If we can create an AI that fully simulates a cockroach, down to every firing neuron, does it mean it’s not AI just because it’s not simulating something more complex, like a mouse? Does it need to exceed a human to be considered AI?
Intelligence (in a biological sense) is defined differently from how computer scientists approach describing artificial intelligence. “Making a decision based on information” is not a criteria sufficient to declare something is intelligent in a biological sense. But that’s what a lot of people (wrongly) assume when they hear artificial “intelligence”.
To describe an AI as intelligent, as understood in natural science, you obviously can’t use the criteria applied in computer science. There is broad consensus in biological science that animals have intelligence. Just the scope of intelligence is heavily discussed, or rather, which level of intelligence each of them reach.
Viruses are not considered lifeforms, btw. Naturally, there is no 100 % answer on anything in science. But that shouldn’t be confused with there being no substance to these answers.