ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Dreyfus' critique of artificial intelligence

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is like a magic robot brain that can understand language and make decisions. Some people wonder if we can make the AI really smart, so it can do all kinds of things for us. But there is a person named Hubert Dreyfus who had some concerns about this idea.

He said that AI might not be able to understand things the way people do. This is because people have something called "embodied knowledge," which means our understanding of the world is influenced by our bodies and experiences.

For example, if we touch something hot, our body sends a signal to our brain that it is hot and we need to move away from it. We learn from this experience and are less likely to touch hot things in the future. But AI doesn't have a body or the ability to experience things, so it might not be able to understand the world in the same way as humans.

Dreyfus also said that AI depends on having a lot of rules programmed into it, whereas humans often rely on intuition and common sense. For example, if we see a picture of a cat and a dog, we can easily tell which is which without having to think about it. But AI needs to be told specific rules, like "cats have pointy ears" and "dogs have floppy ears," in order to know the difference.

Overall, Dreyfus' critique suggests that AI may not be able to match human intelligence because it is missing some important elements, like embodied knowledge and intuition. While AI can be very helpful in certain areas, like making calculations and analyzing data, it may not be able to fully replicate the complexity of the human mind.