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Edge 8Dennett 9

 

[T]he public will persist in imagining that any black box that can do that (whatever the latest AI accomplishment is) must be an intelligent agent much like a human being, when in fact what is inside the box is a bizarrely truncated, two-dimensional fabric that gains its power precisely by not adding the overhead of a human mind, with all its distractability, worries, emotional commitments, memories, allegiances. It is not a humanoid robot at all but a mindless slave, the latest advance in auto-pilots....

The real danger, then, is not machines that are more intelligent than we are usurping our role as captains of our destinies. The real danger is basically clueless machines being ceded authority far beyond their competence.

-- Daniel C. Dennett. "The Singularity -- an Urban Legend?" Edge 2015 : WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT MACHINES THAT THINK? (Jan 2015) http://edge.org/responses/q2015
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