Peter Norvig

In 1950, Alan Turing suggested we should ask not “Can Machines Think” but rather “What Can Machines Do?” Edsger Dijkstra got it right in 1984 when he said the question of Can Machine Think “is about as relevant as the question of whether Submarines Can Swim.” By that he meant that both are questions in sociolinguistics: how do we choose to use words such as “think”? In English, submarines do not swim, but in Russian, they do. This is irrelevant to the capabilities of submarines. So let’s explore what it is that machines can do, and whether we should fear their capabilities.