mardi 11 juin 2013

Rise of the massage : (why) humans will always beat machines


"Computer scientists contributed significantly to the firm establishment of the information-processing dogma by using expressions such as "intelligence", "memory", and "language" to describe computers, which led most people - including the scientists themselves - to think that these terms refer to the well-known human phenomena. This, however, is a grave misunderstanding, which has helped to perpetuate, and even reinforce, the Cartesian image of human beings as machines. 
Recent developments in cognitive science have made it clear that human intelligence is utterly different from a machine, or "artificial", intelligence. The human nervous system does not process any information (in the sense of discrete elements existing ready-made in the outside world, to be picked up by the cognitive system), but interacts with the environment by continually modulating its structure. Moreover, neuroscientists have discovered strong evidence that human intelligence, human memory, and human decisions are never completely rational but are always colored by emotions, as we all know from experience. Our thinking is always accompanied by bodily sensations and processes. Even if we often tend to suppress these, we always think also with our body; and since computers do not have such a body, truly human problems will always be foreign to their intelligence. 
These considerations imply that certain tasks should never be left to computers, as Joseph Weizenbaum asserted emphatically in his classic book, Computer Power and Human Reason. These tasks include all those that require genuine human qualities such as wisdom, compassion, respect, understanding, or love. Decisions and communications that require those qualities will dehumanize our lives if they are made by computers."

Fritjof Capra, The web of life