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18 - Can an Algorithm Be Intelligent?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 March 2020

Serge Abiteboul  and
Gilles Dowek
Serge Abiteboul
Affiliation:
Institut National de Recherche en Informatique et en Automatique (INRIA), Rocquencourt
Gilles Dowek
Affiliation:
Ecole Normale Supérieure, Paris
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Summary

In the age of algorithms, new fears have arisen, including the fear that one day we will be overtaken, or even enslaved, by new beings, transhumans favored by natural selection, but also, more simply, by computers or algorithms more intelligent than us. This leads us to a question that computer scientists have been asking since the 1950s: Can an algorithm be intelligent? This question brings up two others. What does the adjective intelligent mean? Can we create an intelligent being?

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The Age of Algorithms , pp. 150 - 155
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

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