Right. Every epoch shows a tendency to model intelligence in terms of some favored technology. It's a mistake to take these beyond very casual and loose metaph

Right. Every epoch shows a tendency to model intelligence in terms of some favored technology. It's a mistake to take these beyond very casual and loose metaphors. It's a very difficult habit of thought to break for some people because they've tacitly committed to a particular (sloppy and half-baked) metaphysical view of the world and haven't yet learned to examine those presuppositions and learned how they fail spectacularly. I would prefer we use "automation" instead of "AI". That way, we are forced to speak specifically ("automation of what?; it's always specific) and say things like "machine-automated aviation" because that's what this is. It's clear, faithful to the truth, and obvious what we're talking about and what's happening at a general level, and we aren't reifying some vague bullshit fantastical term like "artificial intelligence" which only leads to romanticized mystification and projection. There is no artificial intelligence. Machines doing so-called AI are the same kinds of machines we use to write email and make phone calls. We've just configured them in a way that makes them useful in different situations in different ways for specific ends, even if the applicability appears general; we've done the generalization which is then represented in concrete ways which are not themselves general. (N.b. central to intelligence is the ability to abstract (not the lambda calc/CS meaning) from particulars. I have the concept Circularity which is not just an image (there are potentially an infinite number of circular objects), but based on experience of particular circular things, my intellect has abstracted from this experience the universal concept of Circularity. I understand Circularity, apart from any given circle, and yet what is true of it is true of all circles. I can analyze the concept to infer that any circle's circumference is twice its radius times pi or that its area is the square of its radius times pi. Computers don't do this and cannot do this even in principle because all physical things are always concrete. There is no physical Circularity, only physical, concrete circles. And abstraction is not regression. Indeed, all the abstract values in your computer aren't really abstract except in the mind of the observer. Those in your computer are representations only, devoid of denotation except what's in the programmer's head.)