Natural and Artificial Intelligence

How are we making computers do the things we used to associated only with humans? Have we made a breakthrough in understanding human intelligence?

While recent achievements might give the sense that the answer is yes, the short answer is that we are nowhere near. All we’ve achieved for the moment is a breakthrough in emulating intelligence.

Artificial intelligence is a badly defined term. Successful deployments of intelligent systems are common, but normally they are redefined to be non-intelligent. My favourite example is Watt’s governor. Immortalised in the arms of the statue of “Science” on the Holborn viaduct in London, Watt’s governor automatically regulated the speed of a steam engine, closing the inlet valve progressively as the engine ran faster. It did the job that an intelligent operator used to have to do, but few today would describe it as “artificial intelligence”.

A more recent example comes from the middle of the last century. A hundred years ago computers were human beings, often female, who conducted repetitive mathematical tasks for the creation of mathematical tables such as logarithms. Our modern digital computers were originally called automatic computers to