> If the thing is intelligent, then there’s nothing artificial about it… it’s almost an oxymoron.
Artificial means human made, if we made a thing that is intelligent, then it is artificial intelligence.
It is like "artificial insemination" means a human designed system to inseminate rather than the natural way. It is still a proper insemination, artificial doesn't mean "fake", it just means unnatural/human made.
Well, you and I agree, but there’s an entire industry and pop culture throwing the term around rather imprecisely (calling LLMs “AI”) which makes actual discussion about what AGI is, difficult.
I guess I don’t understand the technical difference between AI and AGI and consider AI to refer to the social meme of “this thing kinda seems like it did something intelligent, like magic”.
> Aren't humans themselves essentially human made?
No, not in the sense in which the word "made" is being used here.
> Maybe a better definition would be non-human (or inorganic if we want to include intelligence like e.g. dolphins)?
Neither of these work. Calling intelligence in animals "artificial" is absurd, and "inorganic" arbitrarily excludes "head cheese" style approaches to building artificial intelligence.
"Artificial" strongly implies mimicry of something that occurs naturally, and is derived from the same root as "artifice", which can be defined as "to construct by means of skill or specialized art". This obviously excludes the natural biological act of reproduction that produces a newborn human brain (and support equipment) primed to learn and grow; reportedly, sometimes people don't even know they're pregnant until they go into labor (and figure out that's what's happening).
If I asked my wife if she made our son, she would say yes. It is literally called "labour". Then there is "emotional labour" that lasts for 10 years to do the post-training.
I drove my car to work today, and while I was at work I drove a meeting. Does this mean my car is a meeting? My meeting was a car?
It turns out that some (many, in fact) words mean different things in different contexts. My comment makes an explicit argument concerning the connotations and nuances of the word "made" used in this context, and you have not responded to that argument.
Maybe you should have written a substantive response to my comments instead of trying and failing to dunk on me. Maybe you don't understand as much as you think you do.
I honestly don’t care enough to even have even remotely thought about my reply as trying to dunk on anything. You’re awfully jacked up for a comment so far down an old thread that you and I are probably the only ones who will ever read it.
> Aren't humans themselves essentially human made?
Humans evolved, but yeah the definition can be a bit hard to understand since it is hard to separate things. That is why I brought up the artificial insemination example since it deals with this.
> Maybe a better definition would be non-human (or inorganic if we want to include intelligence like e.g. dolphins)?
We also have artificial lakes, they are inorganic but human made.
Artificial means human made, if we made a thing that is intelligent, then it is artificial intelligence.
It is like "artificial insemination" means a human designed system to inseminate rather than the natural way. It is still a proper insemination, artificial doesn't mean "fake", it just means unnatural/human made.