All Intelligence Is Artificial

Years ago, somebody in DrDobbsJournal or ByteMagazine wrote a column about ArtificialIntelligence. At the end of the article where the "about the author" stuff is usually written, he wrote "______ believes that all intelligence is artificial." The blank contained his name.

Anybody know his name and what issue of what magazine this was in?

It's an interesting point of view...

It was Jeffrey Goldsmith according to http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/2.04/cyc-o.html

Another name associated: Edwin Schlossberg

http://www.ellipsis.com/i+e/letters/05.html -

: "When I asked Edwin what he thought of artificial intelligence he paused for a moment and then he said 'all intelligence is artificial'. And then, after another pause 'and all artifice is intelligent'. And to me that's the end of the matter."

It all depends on how you define artificial. Usually it means something like "man-made", and is similar to the word "unnatural" in the way it separates us and what we do from everything else in the universe. People use "artificial intelligence" to delineate intelligence we make and intelligence our genes make.

Your point is literally true, but taking it more figuratively, it's interesting to reflect upon the degree to which human intelligence is expanded and directed as a result of deliberate conscious choice, and I think that's what the line "All intelligence is artificial" calls attention to. Though we cannot choose the genetically-endowed aspects of our intelligence, we can choose whether and how we use it. That choice is always, and quintessentially, man-made.

If I believed in FreeWill that might make sense. See GoedelEscherBach for why I don't.