Minds, Brains, AI

TL;DR

This paper critically examines claims about artificial general intelligence, consciousness, and theory of mind in machines, arguing that current evidence does not support these notions and emphasizing the scientific basis of these debates.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive review of scientific evidence addressing whether computers can think, be conscious, or have a theory of mind, challenging prevalent science fiction claims.

Findings

Computers do not currently think or reason like humans.

There is no scientific evidence that machines are conscious or sentient.

Machines lack a true theory of mind according to current scientific understanding.

Abstract

In the last year or so and going back many decades there has been extensive claims by major computational scientists, engineers, and others that AGI, artificial general intelligence, is five or ten years away, but without a scintilla of scientific evidence, for a broad body of these claims. Computers will become conscious, have a theory of mind, think and reason, will become more intelligent than humans, and so on. But the claims are science fiction, not science. This article reviews evidence for the following three propositions using extensive body of scientific research and related sources from the cognitive and neurosciences, evolutionary evidence, linguistics, data science, comparative psychology, self-driving cars, robotics. and the learning sciences. (1) Do computing machines think or reason? (2) Are computing machines sentient or conscious? (3) Do computing machines have a theory of mind?