Artificial Unintelligence: How Computers Misunderstand the World

by Meredith Broussard,
The Philadelphia Inquirer, June 28, 2018

Nearly 30 years ago, philosopher John Searle claimed that digital computers were not – and could not be – intelligent. Unlike human beings, who think and feel, Searle wrote, devices that manipulate formal symbols cannot contain “mental contents, because the symbols, by definition, have no meaning (or interpretation or semantics) except insofar as someone outside the system gives it to them.”