[hegemonicon]

A philosophical zombie is not a decision tree incapable of learning. A philosophical zombie is something that is exactly like a human in every way except that it lacks consciousness. The concept has more than a few problems - see http://lesswrong.com/lw/p7/zombies_zombies/

If a decision tree (or a clever algorithm or whatever) REALLY did perfectly mimic a thinking human (including our ability to learn), do you still think it wouldn't REALLY be intelligent? That there's some sort of important, qualitative difference between being shifted through a decision tree and sensory inputs and feedback loops building up neuron action potentials? That may be true, but the evidence is heavily stacked against such a worldview.

That said, I agree that this is a bad approach to AI. It's not like people haven't been trying to stitch together various subproblems of intelligence for the better part of 50 years.

[ThomPete]

But 50 years is hardly a long time is it?