Abstract
In August 2022, only a few months before ChatGPT was released, Barry Smith, well-known contemporary philosopher, together with Jobst Landgrebe, artificial intelligence entrepreneur, published a book
entitled Why Machines will Never Rule the World: Artificial Intelligence without Fear (Landgrebe and Smith
2022). In this important, dense and far-reaching work, Landgrebe and Smith argue from the mathematical
theory of complex systems, and a sophisticated analysis of the capabilities of human intelligence, that AGI—
at the level of human intelligence—will never be possible. In broad outline, Landgrebe and Smith claim that
intelligent human behaviour is a facility that develops from a complex world and for a complex world; that
the complexities of the real world and our behaviour in it can never be fully specified or simulated mathematically; that digital systems can only execute what can be simulated mathematically; and that therefore
human-level intelligence will never be manifested by a digital system. The present collection of articles is in response to and inspired by Landgrebe and Smith. It provides reflections from a variety of perspectives and disciplines on the possibility of AGI, as well as on the transformations that AI technology is already bringing even in its current incarnation.