Smith and Landgrebe: Why machines will never rule the world

Our new book, Why Machines Will Never Rule the World, argues that for mathematical reasons there will never exist an artificial intelligence that is able to emulate the intelligence even of a crow. AI algorithms have of course been built that surpass human intelligence in impressive ways; but this is always along narrow lanes (for example in playing certain sorts of games). Rats, crows, and humans, in contrast, have general intelligence, which means that they are able to relate successfully even to environments of a sort which they have never before encountered. The argument of the book is that AI systems will never be developed that have this sort of general intelligence. The argument rests on the mathematical properties of complex systems such as organisms, the Earth’s weather and climate systems, or the New York Stock Exchange. We show what features of these systems make their behavior unpredictable, and we argue that for an AI to emulate human intelligence it would need to possess these features. We show also that this is precisely excluded by the fact that AI systems need to be executable by a machine.

UB philosophy professor Barry Smith is one of the most widely cited contemporary philosophers. He has made influential contributions to the foundations of ontology and data science, especially in the biomedical domain. Most recently, his work has led to the creation of an international standard in the ontology field (ISO/IEC 21838), which is the first example of a piece of philosophy that has been subjected to the ISO standardization process.

Jobst Landgrebe is a scientist and entrepreneur with a background in philosophy, mathematics, neuroscience, and bioinformatics. Landgrebe is also the founder of Cognotekt, a German AI company which has since 2013 provided working systems used by companies in areas such as insurance claims management, real estate management, and medical billing. After more than 10 years in the AI industry, he has developed an exceptional understanding of the limits and potential of AI in the future.