According to the conventional wisdom, Turing said that computing machines can be intelligent. I don't believe it. I think that what Turing really said was that computing machines –- computers limited to computing –- can only fake intelligence. If we want computers to become genuinelyintelligent, we will have to give them enough “initiative” to do more than compute. In this paper, I want to try to develop this idea. I want to explain how giving computers more ``initiative'' can allow them (...) to do more than compute. And I want to say why I believe that they will have to go beyond computation before they can become genuinely intelligent. (shrink)

Shanks and St. John (1994a) suggest that From the viewpoint of a computer scientist who tries to construct learning systems, that claim seems rather implausible. In this commentary I wish to suggest why, in the hopes of shedding light on the relationship between consciousness and learning.

According to the conventional wisdom, Turing (1950) said that computing machines can be intelligent. I don't believe it. I think that what Turing really said was that computing machines –- computers limited to computing –- can only fake intelligence. If we want computers to become genuinelyintelligent, we will have to give them enough “initiative” (Turing, 1948, p. 21) to do more than compute. In this paper, I want to try to develop this idea. I want to explain how giving computers (...) more ``initiative'' can allow them to do more than compute. And I want to say why I believe (and believe that Turing believed) that they will have to go beyond computation before they can become genuinely intelligent. (shrink)

To convince us that computers cannot have mental states, Searle (1980) imagines a “Chinese room” that simulates a computer that “speaks” Chinese and asks us to find the understanding in the room. It's a trick. There is no understanding in the room, not because computers can't have it, but because the room's computer-simulation is defective. Fix it and understanding appears. Abracadabra!