My own thinking on this has been very much influenced by an early AI researcher-turned-philosopher and HCI practitioner, Terry Winograd. His book Understanding Computers and Cognition has some solid arguments for seeing cognition as a trait evolved as a form of "structural coupling" between a living organism and its environment. Highly recommended for anyone looking for an alternate perspective on AI from someone who was doing it way, way before it was cool.
We humans are really fascinating machines, continuously fed with a huge stream of data which we learn to filter and analyze. It takes time to accumulate the data and refine our pattern matching until we seem to be intelligent. It's hard to draw a line when this happens.
Maybe everything happens so fast and seamlessly that we consider it to be something magic and simply call it intelligence? Or maybe there really is something in there, reading in-between the lines, a soul?
We all know that each of us is looking outside from somewhere within a brain and you are able to influence your actions. But, is it some kind of feedback loop which can be reproduced mechanically or something supernatural?
As long as we don't know this, every attempt to recreate general intelligence may be futile.
I think that basically comes down to greed and ignorance.
> There is no clear pattern we can match [...] leading us to a solution.
Except, as best I know, both the problem and solution were recognised in the 80s but it wasn't in the companies' interests to torpedo their profits at the time.
e.g. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97...
Societal problems are a different beast. There are so many feedback loops, strategies and socioeconomic forces, that it's hard to find a clear cut solution even if you know the problem.
Stupid example: If you play Sim City, are you able to handle overpopulation, collapse of transportation and disasters? After a few games you definitely get better, recognize the patterns and handle accordingly.
So why doesn't it work in real life, climate change for example? Maybe the data is just too overwhelming, contradictory or incomplete? Maybe we just don't know any patterns which could help us? Or maybe we humans are simply not intelligent?
Because there's a benevolent dictator (you) who can impose societal solutions without contradictory structures (capitalism, etc.) getting in the way. If you were playing multiplayer Sim City with everyone's goal being "make their city the best", I guarantee that most games will end up with societal disasters being unhandled.
> So why doesn't it work in real life, climate change for example?
Capitalism.
> Maybe the data is just too overwhelming, contradictory or incomplete?
Nope, it's complete, non-contradictory, and perfectly clear. The only problem we have dealing with the climate crisis is that it will cost money and discomfort and, unless it's imposed from above, people generally aren't interested in worsening their lives to help distant others (cf tax rates, zoning laws, racism, ...)
Also some things are definitely preprogrammed and passed on from one generation to the next. There are many examples regarding animals, like small pigeons reacting to the shape of an eagle which they have never seen before.
Now add a decade long learning phase and you get general intelligence? Or is it all just layers and layers of pattern matching, imitation and preprogrammed behavior?
Could be the reason why humans are so bad at adressing some problems like climate change, plastic pollution or poverty. There is no clear pattern we can match, learned through individual sensory input, leading us to a solution.