Where there’s no will, there’s no way: Why artificial intelligence will never rule...

Where there’s no will, there’s no way: Why artificial intelligence will never rule the world

This interview should be considered in conjunction with Rev. Jamie Franklin’s interview of the same authors for Irreverend: “Transhumanism and the belief in Artificial Intelligence are part of the positivist tradition of secular pseudo-religion […] Schwab’s Fourth Industrial Revolution is a collection of utter nonsense.” Another recent interview with the authors is Digital Trends with Luke Dormehl.
 
Alex Thomson: I’m joined today by Barry Smith and Jobst Landgrebe to discuss their fascinating book Why Machines Will Never Rule the World, published by Routledge in its Philosophy imprint....

Barry Smith: I’ll have a go at this. The whole theme of the book is that there is a distinction between two kinds of systems.

One kind of system is the mechanical system, as you [Jobst Landgrebe] used this term, and computers are mechanical systems. Your laptop is a mechanical system; a toaster is a mechanical system. And mechanical systems are built by humans. We understand how they work because we understand physics, and we can predict the behaviour of the systems on the basis of what we know about their parts and the way they’re put together.

On the other hand, there are complex systems—and all organisms are complex; systems and the oceans of the world are complex systems; and so on. We can talk a lot about complex systems.
Now, the problem is that the claim of the artificial intelligence enthusiasts, shall we say, is that the mind itself is just a mechanical system and therefore sooner or later we will be able to understand how it works in just the same way we understand how a computer or a laptop or a toaster or a car works.

And we argue—on the basis of a quite complicated series of arguments, some of which are grounded in mathematics—that this is not the case: no organism, not even the simplest organism, is ever going to be able to be understood in the way that we understand the workings of mechanisms.

And so this means that we cannot understand in particular how the brain works.