Wright

Can Machines Think? Maybe So, as Deep Blue’s Chess Prowess Suggests, is an article written by Robert Wright that discusses some of the many deliberations over the concerns of artificial intelligence in their relation to human intelligence. More specifically with detail on consciousness, the article discusses the theories of philosophers David Chalmers and Daniel Dennet.

Wrights first demonstration of the concerns growing between artificial and human intelligence are displayed by Garry Kasparov, a chess champion, whom seemed to believe he’d be stripped of his dignity, had he not been able to beat the computer he was playing against. Kasparov’s reaction is what introduced the concern of how far progressed artificial intelligence is actually becoming. Wright points out that machines are beginning to do jobs that were at one time only held by people, and are doing so more powerfully than ever before. It is that computers are getting smarter, and philosophers are beginning to take the idea of consciousness more seriously (Wright 140). The Turing test, which addresses the question of a machine capability to think, is one of the ways Wright defies this idea (Wright 141).

Discussion of machine progression leads into concerns of the consciousness of the mind. Debating it are philosophers David Chalmers of University of California Santa Cruz and Daniel Dennet of Tufts University. While Dennett believes that the consciousness is the mind and the mind is the machine, Chalmers believes consciousness is a mystery that’s continually becoming more perplexed then we ever first thought (Wright 142). Wright unbiasedly discusses these both of these philosophers’ theories. He uses Cog, a robot who will eventually have a sensitive, synthetic “skin” as an example. Dennett, who knows that when a human touches something hot, the hand will recoil, also thinks that a robots ability to recoil the hand is the same thing. While he believes this is a good example for explaining consciousness do to the messages sent and received by the “brain” of the robot, Chalmers feels this is not entirely analyzed, such in the fact that the robot does know why it’s reacting the way it is (Wright 143).

The deliberation continues but always seems to come back to whether or not machines can think in one way or another. Chalmers even goes as far as thinking “AI research may… be generating new spheres of consciousness unsensed by the rest of us” insinuating that machines may eventually become sentient beings (Wright 146).