An argument for the impossibility of machine intelligence

TL;DR

This paper argues that creating true machine intelligence is impossible based on thermodynamic and mathematical principles, showing that current definitions are too weak and that necessary properties cannot be physically realized.

Contribution

It critically analyzes existing intelligence definitions and demonstrates the physical impossibility of designing or evolving an AI with genuine intelligence.

Findings

Mainstream AI definitions are too weak to capture insect intelligence

Necessary properties for an AI to possess basic intelligence are physically unrealizable

Mathematical and physical constraints prevent the creation of true machine intelligence

Abstract

Since the noun phrase `artificial intelligence' (AI) was coined, it has been debated whether humans are able to create intelligence using technology. We shed new light on this question from the point of view of themodynamics and mathematics. First, we define what it is to be an agent (device) that could be the bearer of AI. Then we show that the mainstream definitions of `intelligence' proposed by Hutter and others and still accepted by the AI community are too weak even to capture what is involved when we ascribe intelligence to an insect. We then summarise the highly useful definition of basic (arthropod) intelligence proposed by Rodney Brooks, and we identify the properties that an AI agent would need to possess in order to be the bearer of intelligence by this definition. Finally, we show that, from the perspective of the disciplines needed to create such an agent, namely mathematics and physics, these properties are realisable by neither implicit nor explicit mathematical design nor by setting up an environment in which an AI could evolve spontaneously.