Ancient Greek concepts about intelligence can shed light on 21st-century tech they never knew. (Composite: Letty Avila. Image Source: Adobe Firefly; iStock.)
Can AI think – and should it? What it means to think, from Plato to ChatGPT
Whether AI can ‘think’ is a different question than whether it is ‘intelligent.’
In my writing and rhetoric courses, students have plenty of opinions on whether AI is intelligent: how well it can assess, analyze, evaluate and communicate information.
When I ask whether artificial intelligence can “think,” however, I often look upon a sea of blank faces. What is “thinking,” and how is it the same or different from “intelligence”?
We might treat the two as more or less synonymous, but philosophers have marked nuances for millennia. Greek philosophers may not have known about 21st-century technology, but their ideas about intellect and thinking can help us understand what’s at stake with AI today.