Interesting question comes to mind: What do they consider intelligent?
Today we have computers with a pre-programmed “if-then” function. When we “invent” technology that learns from past “if-then” scenarios, it could be regarded as “intelligent.” Dogs and pets can be trained but are not considered intelligent by human standards.
What then are we trying to create when we create “intelligence” scientifically? Intelligence that develops into self preservation and begins to have morals, values, etc. gets dangerous. I believe this is where your post is going.
I would take it one further and suggest that technology that can learn and decide is also more able to make mistakes. A well trained dog will sometimes still bite its owner given certain circumstances.
Good thoughts....
>>What then are we trying to create when we create “intelligence” scientifically?
Currently AI is working on noisy pattern recognition and natural language processing. The outcome is problem specific and amoral. We may eventually get to a point where we can talk to a computer and have it simulate feelings to facilitate communication, but abstract philosophical thinking and moral behavior is not along the current path of AI.
In fact, AI has gotten “dumber” recently, and backed away from serious problems that originated the field in favor of statistical text and image processing algorithms that end up being incomprehensible once trained.
I was speculating less about the future than about the past. My personal operating hypothesis is that intelligence evolved first as energy, which then began creating and tinkering with matter. That would explain why the nitty-gritty details of how matter-based life (eventually including intelligence) appear to have evolved on earth seem suspiciously neat and tidy and fortuitous. It’s not that they didn’t evolve, but that they were being tinkered with, or at least the starting contents of, and nearby influences on the giant petri dish of Planet Earth were thought through and planned — just like the petri dishes these scientists are working with in their attempts to creating life from scratch. This line of thinking leads to unsettling possibilities, like that we and our planet are some higher intelligence’s middle school science fair project that got an “Honorable Mention”.