Ada Intelligence

Ada Lovelace, a visionary mathematician often called the world's first computer programmer, cautioned against unqualified optimism in the 19th century. She wrote that "The Analytical Engine has no pretensions whatever to originate anything. It can do whatever we know how to order it to perform. It can follow analysis; but it has no power of anticipating any analytical relations or truths." She believed it could only follow instructions, not discover new ideas on its own. This debate about artificial intelligence (AI) continues today. Ada Lovelace may have started the conversation, but it's far from over. Lovelace's skepticism has been challenged by advancements like DeepMind's AlphaGo program, which famously defeated a world champion in the complex game of Go. This feat demonstrated an ability to learn and adapt beyond what programmers explicitly coded. And yet, generative AIs of today can struggle with reasoning, as their tokenization mimics intelligence rather than true reasoning abilities.[i] Lovelace’s skepticism should empower our critical thinking regarding the results and abilities we see now and in the future.

(See also Arnold Intelligence and Alan Intelligence)

[i] Fascinating research paper from Apple demonstrating some of the reasoning and logic limitations of AI models today. [https://machinelearning.apple.com/research/gsm-symbolic]