Is the Goal of AI Still “Human” Intelligence?

Despite warnings that the present technologies may never add up to “true” or “human” intelligence, much of the world may not care whether it does. AI has been rapidly finding industrial applications such as the use of large language models to automate enterprise IT, and the focus has shifted from intelligence to achievement. Yann LeCun, chief AI scientist at Meta, expressed concern that the dominant work of deep learning today — if it pursues its present course — will not achieve what he refers to as “true” intelligence, which includes things such as the ability of a computer system to plan a course of action using common sense. Industrial AI professionals don’t want to ask hard questions, though, they merely want things to run smoothly. In 1950 British mathematician Alan Turing anticipated this change in attitude, predicting that ways of talking about computers and intelligence would shift in favor of accepting computer behavior as intelligent. If industrial AI continues to focus on achievement, there may be fewer and fewer people who even care to ask whether it is intelligent.