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Over the Side With Old Scientific Tenets | NY Times
by flagamuffin

    Frank Wilczek of M.I.T., a Nobel Prize winner in physics, would retire the distinction between mind and matter, a bedrock notion, at least in the West, since the time of Descartes. We know a lot more about matter and atoms now, Dr. Wilczek says, and about the brain. Matter, he says, “can dance in intricate, dynamic patterns; it can exploit environmental resources, to self-organize and export entropy.”

    We can teach it to play chess.

    But don’t get too excited. Roger Schank, a computer scientist and psychologist for the nonprofit group Engines for Education, says that a chess-playing computer won’t tell us anything about how or why humans play chess nor will it get interested in a new game when it gets bored. We should abolish the term “artificial intelligence,” he says, adding: “There really is no need to create artificial humans anyway. We have enough real ones already.”