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One of the reasons this analogy is unconvincing is that humans have compared themselves and their inner workings to "the current technology of the time" for mil

One of the reasons this analogy is unconvincing is that humans have compared themselves and their inner workings to "the current technology of the time" for millenia: - ~3rd century BCE : The invention of hydraulic engineering (eg aqueducs) in the 3rd century BCE led to the popularity of a hydraulic model of human intelligence, the idea that the flow of different fluids in the body accounted for both physical and mental functioning. - Pre-Socratic Greece : The ancient Greeks saw the mind as a chariot pulled by horses of reason and emotion. - 1500s-1600s: Automata powered by springs and gears had been devised, Descartes suggested that cerebral hydraulic automata produced behavior by powering "animal spirits" through the nerves. - 1700s–1800s: The mind worked like clockwork. - Industrial revolution (1800s) : In the industrial revolution, the mind was understood as a steam engine. - Late 1800s : Hermann von Helmholtz compared the mind's workings to telegraphy and hydraulics; the brain was likened to a telegraph network or a complex switchboard - 1895 : Sigmund Freud in 1895 described a Project for a Scientific Psychology using a crude neural network model and borrowed concepts from thermodynamics, speaking of psychic energy, pressure, and discharge, essentially a hydraulic model of the psyche. - 1930s–present : "our brain is a computer" - and 2022-now: "We are LLMs!" I can't wait to become a quantum chip, an NFT, and so on, as new things arrive. It doesn't make any of those models accurate. They're just the metaphor of the day.

Melatonic 2mo ago
I suppose you could argue that none of those had the actual engineers behind them attempting to replicate "intelligence" though. Just because random people made metaphors doesn't mean the engineers designing them had any illusion that it was nothing like the brain. My personal opinion is that eventually we may just get advanced enough genetic engineering combined with brain / computer networks that the real A.I. will just be a brain like thing grown in a lab but more specialised. Or who knows - our own brains might have some quantum inner workings as well we are unaware of !
- sebastiennight 2mo ago
  Counterpoint: Our engineers are currently trying to replicate "intelligence" and we think it's like the brain because today we think the brain is where "intelligence" reside, and today we strongly believe that "we" are our brains. I would argue that the inventors of those past technologies were trying to replicate other things (movement, energy, pressure, pneuma, psyche, physis, whatever) that felt deeply human to them, and that in the zeitgeist of his time, Hero of Alexandria (1 BC) could also have said: > I suppose you could argue that none of the stories of the past had the actual philosophers behind them attempting to replicate "pneuma" though. Paracelse was trying to create a homonculus by using semen, manure, and blood in the 16th century or so. A few decades or centuries from now, maybe engineers will try to replicate "consciousness" (though it's pretty clear that Anthropic is already trying) when it has become clear to 22nd century people that giving an object "intelligence" gets you no closer to recreating humanity than "movement through pneumatics" does.

Melatonic 2mo ago

I suppose you could argue that none of those had the actual engineers behind them attempting to replicate "intelligence" though. Just because random people made metaphors doesn't mean the engineers designing them had any illusion that it was nothing like the brain. My personal opinion is that eventually we may just get advanced enough genetic engineering combined with brain / computer networks that the real A.I. will just be a brain like thing grown in a lab but more specialised. Or who knows - our own brains might have some quantum inner workings as well we are unaware of !

sebastiennight 2mo ago
Counterpoint: Our engineers are currently trying to replicate "intelligence" and we think it's like the brain because today we think the brain is where "intelligence" reside, and today we strongly believe that "we" are our brains. I would argue that the inventors of those past technologies were trying to replicate other things (movement, energy, pressure, pneuma, psyche, physis, whatever) that felt deeply human to them, and that in the zeitgeist of his time, Hero of Alexandria (1 BC) could also have said: > I suppose you could argue that none of the stories of the past had the actual philosophers behind them attempting to replicate "pneuma" though. Paracelse was trying to create a homonculus by using semen, manure, and blood in the 16th century or so. A few decades or centuries from now, maybe engineers will try to replicate "consciousness" (though it's pretty clear that Anthropic is already trying) when it has become clear to 22nd century people that giving an object "intelligence" gets you no closer to recreating humanity than "movement through pneumatics" does.