Depends on the criteria we place on “understanding.” Certainly an AI may act in a way that invite us to attribute ‘common sense’ to it in some situations, without solving the ’whole problem.” Watson would seem to be a case in point—apparently demonstrating true language understanding within a broad, but still strongly circumscribed domain.
Even if we take “language understanding” in the strong sense (i.e. meaning native fluency, including ability for semantic innovation, things like irony, etc), there is still the question of phenomenal experience: does having such an understanding entail the experience of such understanding—self-consciousness, and are we concerned with that?
I think that “true” language understanding is indeed “AI complete”, but in a rather trivial sense that to match a competent human speaker one needs to have most of the ancillary cognitive capacities of a competent human.
Whether we are concerned about the internal experiences of machines seems to depend largely on whether we are trying to judge the intrinsic value of the machines, or judge their consequences for human society. Both seem important.
Depends on the criteria we place on “understanding.” Certainly an AI may act in a way that invite us to attribute ‘common sense’ to it in some situations, without solving the ’whole problem.” Watson would seem to be a case in point—apparently demonstrating true language understanding within a broad, but still strongly circumscribed domain.
Even if we take “language understanding” in the strong sense (i.e. meaning native fluency, including ability for semantic innovation, things like irony, etc), there is still the question of phenomenal experience: does having such an understanding entail the experience of such understanding—self-consciousness, and are we concerned with that?
I think that “true” language understanding is indeed “AI complete”, but in a rather trivial sense that to match a competent human speaker one needs to have most of the ancillary cognitive capacities of a competent human.
Whether we are concerned about the internal experiences of machines seems to depend largely on whether we are trying to judge the intrinsic value of the machines, or judge their consequences for human society. Both seem important.