| In my opinion, it's not. Natural intelligence is another way of saying that dynamics and interactions of millions of neurons in our brain is too complicated for us to understand. Our brain is just a complex machine, and the complexity at the level of its individual components is based on very fundamental laws of physics and chemistry. In that sense, you bring up an excellent question. I don't think there exists any unique "natural intelligence" which Hofstadter in the linked article is referring to. Watson is only different from "natural intelligence" in terms of complexity. Conway's Game of Life can perhaps be used as an analogy here. The uninitiated is likely to assume a very complex source code upon observing setups like 'spaceships' and 'glider guns'. However, it all is based on some very simple rules which can be easily implemented by a high school computer science student. I'd to extrapolate this logic towards the concept of 'life' itself. I feel that what we call life is just collective of natural processes too complicated for us to comprehend completely. Scientific research has allowed us to understand biological processes to some extend, but not enough to us to deduce the state of a living entity at t+1 by observing the state at t=0. The common assumption is that there is some independent/supernatural force (consciousness) which allows the living entity to 'chose' the new state at t+1 (free will). Watson appears to be "intelligently" making a chess move, but as Hofstadter points out, Watson is simply following a set of rules. We can independently calculate Watson's move since we know it's source code. My conjecture is that if we are theoretically able to capture the complete state of your brain cells at t=0, and understand how they work, I can theoretically calculate your chess play before you make it. For example, check out this White Blood Cell chasing and killing bacteria:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JnlULOjUhSQ WBC appears to be a living entity, acting out of free will. But the reality is that, molecular composition of WBC is merely attracted to the chemical trail left behind the bacteria, which in turn is repelled by WBC. We do not consider a piece of rock rolling down the hill to be a living entity, because our understanding of physics allows us to calculate the state of a rock at t+1, given it's position a t=0. |