She was blind and deaf, but she still had enormous amounts of tactile information and the ability to physically interact with her environment. Moreover, those s

She was blind and deaf, but she still had enormous amounts of tactile information and the ability to physically interact with her environment. Moreover, those sensory elements were critical for her to finally be able to start learning language--she finally caught on that the signs another person was making in one hand represented the water being run over her other hand. And she didn't make that breakthrough until she was 7 years old, and only then began to learn with the persistent help of an instructor.[0] I would say that Helen Keller's life argues that a intelligent machine must be able to have experiences and the capacity to associate experiences with language. The machine probably doesn't need all of the perceptual modalities that we have, as Helen Keller demonstrated, but it should probably have some similarities with our own so that there would be common ground for initiating communication about experiences. A machine with just a text in / text out interface has nothing in common with us. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helen_Keller#Early_childhood_and_illness https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helen_Keller#Early_childhood_a...