The manner of human "pre-programming" is so abstract that it falls outside the definition of what is normally meant by "pre-programming" in the context of AI. If you had some basic "instincts" codified into your AI that allowed for "self-perseveration" or was manifested as some type of reasoning-engine-BIOS that's one thing, but applying arbitrary training data sets onto your AI (as a pre-requisite for it to function maximally) is the type of "pre-programming" I'm getting at.

I think that it is still very relevant though to this discussion. I was born with some reprogrammed instincts and senses to let me objectively decide if an experience was positive or negative. This ultimately is the basis on which I am able to learn. When you're young, you may try random things like putting your hand on a hot burner. It gives you pain, so you learn not to do that! Likewise we need to pre-program an AI with ways of objectifying its environment and stimulus. From there a trial and error mentality can lead to a wealth of artificial knowledge. To expect a program to come to intelligence that can compete on any degree with humans without first programming some basic 'artificial emotions' would be unfair.

Primates have relatively few instinctive behaviours. Almost everything we do is learned to one degree or another.

You don't recoil when you see a snake/spider? You don't get tired when it gets dark out? You aren't born with the knowledge of how to extract milk from your mother? You don't cry when you're hurt? You don't have an innate desire to please, and fear of pain... which ultimately allows your parents to teach you? We are loaded with survival instincts that set us up for successful learning.

This is dead wrong. We have instincts for extremely complex behavior (like acquiring language, navigating reciprocal relationships, acquiring mates, etc.).

Just because we have evolved the neurological substrates that can be applied to those behaviours doesn't mean those behaviours themselves are instinctive. If navigating reciprocal relationships and acquiring mates are instinctive behaviours, why are so many humans so terrible at those things?

In contrast, something like breastfeeding really is an instinctive behaviour that infants can do automatically without being taught.

Rather than engage on the behaviors that require more writing, I'll just go for the easy kill:

Are you really arguing that we don't have an instinct for acquiring language?

That's a matter of much scientific debate, in fact: https://www.grsampson.net/BLID.html

> My book assesses the many arguments used to justify the language-instinct claim, and it shows that every one of those arguments is wrong. Either the logic is fallacious, or the factual data are incorrect (or, sometimes, both). The evidence points the other way. Children are good at learning languages, because people are good at learning _anything_ that life throws at us — not because we have fixed structures of knowledge built-in.

> A new chapter in this edition analyses a database of English as actually used by a cross-section of the population in everyday conversation. The patterns of real-life usage contradict the claims made by believers in a “language instinct”.

> The new edition includes many further changes and additions, responding to critics and taking account of recent research. It has a preface by Paul M. Postal of New York University.

> The ‘Language Instinct’ Debate ends by posing the question “How could such poor arguments have passed muster for so long?”

So the difference between humans and parrots (who can make all of the same sounds as humans) is that parrots simply have different life experiences?

And how do you explain the fact that humans can only gain native fluency if they learn a language before a certain age? Or the fact that zero instruction is required for children to learn to speak a language fluently? Or that children of immigrants will always prefer to speak in the language of their peers (rather than their parents)? Or that children of two separate groups of immigrants, when mixed socially, will spontaneously create a creole language?

> So the difference between humans and parrots (who can make all of the same sounds as humans) is that parrots simply have different life experiences?

I didn't say that, and I think you know I didn't say that.

I'm not going to engage in a discussion where you beat up on your imagined strawman.

You can go read the literature on language acquisition at your convenience. My understanding (as stated above) is that this is an unsettled question and research is ongoing.

Okay, suit yourself. FWIW, you didn't actually put an argument forth. All you did was provide a quote where somebody claims that they had won an argument. Then you ended by saying that I'm wrong because I won't go read some long book whose main thesis you can't even be bothered to regurgitate.