27 August

Tesla self-driving shows that the debates about whether AI is just a high-powered copy-and-paste machine are nothing but hot air. If AI couldn’t generate its own thought and only copied what it saw elsewhere, Tesla self-driving wouldn’t work. Unless every single drive was a copy of a drive somebody else had done, the car wouldn’t know what to do. The car is thinking. It’s responding to what happens out on the road, in real time. Every trip is novel, unpredictable and complex. The car has to be able to respond to every trip differently. It’s thinking. Human drivers are actually the ones who mostly copy what they’ve always done, or each other (racing), ignoring most of the specific conditions on the road. If you don’t think AI is thinking, the onus is on you to explain what thinking actually is. The only answer I’ve ever got from people on that is ‘what humans do’ i.e. no answer at all. What most call thinking is in just about every case imitative behaviour.