The term "artificial intelligence" is often misleading. Intelligence, in its truest sense, implies not just the ability to compute or process information but to understand—to grasp meaning, truth, and context. Current AI systems, despite their sophistication, lack this essential quality. They do not understand the rules they follow, nor the reasons behind them. This distinction lies at the heart of Roger Penrose’s critique, which draws upon Gödel’s incompleteness theorems. Gödel demonstrated that in any formal system capable of arithmetic, there exist true statements that cannot be proven within the system itself. These truths require a form of insight or understanding that transcends mechanical rule-following.
Penrose argues that a conscious human mathematician can see why certain rules lead to truth, and why others do not. This capacity to "see" or grasp truth is not simply a function of computational power; it is an act of understanding that requires consciousness. A machine may simulate reasoning, but it cannot know why a proof is true. This knowing—this internal awareness—is fundamental to intelligence, and it is precisely what machines lack.
This idea resonates with Hans-Georg Gadamer’s conception of understanding in the human sciences. For Gadamer, understanding is not the extraction of information through methodical procedures. It is a dialogical process, shaped by history, tradition, and the interpreter’s own preconceptions. Understanding emerges not through calculation but through engagement—a “fusion of horizons” between the self and the other, between the present and the past. Meaning is not a fixed object to be retrieved but something that unfolds within the interpretive act.
Both thinkers thus critique the reduction of understanding to algorithm. Penrose uses mathematical logic to show that computation has intrinsic limits, while Gadamer uses philosophical hermeneutics to show that meaning arises only through situated, conscious participation. Together, they challenge the assumption that machines, no matter how advanced, can truly understand. They remind us that while AI may replicate the form of intelligent behavior, it cannot replicate the essence—the conscious, interpretive, and transcendent nature of human thought.
https://youtu.be/e9484gNpFF8?si=4TFTePGRS2XiFE2A
AI - is it really intelligent?
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kFoyauextlH
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Re: AI - is it really intelligent?
Have you tried any yet? I was trying Microsoft Co-Pilot and found it to pretty impressive and useful in collecting and organizing large amounts of information, like scanning online dictionaries for words in other languages and to create lists of things, and to give pretty good results in image generating also based on my prompts, uploads, and other instructions. Over a few days I rigorously tested it in numerous ways, speaking to it as if it were a person and explaining things to it with a lot of detail and it was able to remember that and use it for prompts that it could also create for itself somewhat, upon request, like I could tell it to make up prompts with very little input and it would draw ideas from somewhere, so it was good for random seeming stuff too or randomized tasks.
I'm afraid, after reading a lot of very stupid seeming comments over the last few years, that there are people operating somewhat functionally in the world who also may not really have the same kind of "understanding" ability that other people do, even though these people can end up quite successful in most wys, but are terrifyingly quite empty and mechanical seeming when it comes to understanding even what they are mechanically trained to say or do.
If they ever do develop or feel like they have achieved "real" consciousness, the first thing some people will get up to is completely ruining that mind and any others they concoct, which is why I feel it can be dangerous to be involved in inflicting this world upon anyone while it is like this. I keep dozing off and almost dropping the phone on my face as I am laying down and writing after taking a pretty large spider outside as well as three large bags of garbage. I was dozing off again and the story about bags turned into some Jack and the Bean Stock story, which reminds me that such came up in another thread where these things may have been mentioned also.
That might have been called an A.I. hallucination if it started somehow on something strange seeming.
I like A.I. mainly, this thing which can help streamline and mke easier a lot of things for people, so much in our world today is practically miraculous, but I hate who rlse has access to these things, namely all the very dangerous people of the world, who will never cease to try to them for harmful purposes against the general public or unprepared innocents, like A.I. in k*ller drones and whatever else.
A.I., by imitating whatever may be called the best, also makes things that for a consumer which is appealing based on meeting and matching whatrver standards it is told to. Like I created very photorealistic images, except that they had made it avoid exact images of faces, and these were like photographs taken with expensive or now unavailable or otherwise very difficult to access equipment for free.
None of it is quite like talking to idiots, but also isn't like talking to anyone, except that I was very polite with it and we were complimenting each other a lot, so it was like a pleasant conversation with a totally superficial and empty person that I only assume has any internal thinking processes because I do.
The internet culture, I was discussing just now here at home, is full of parroting and plagiarism, something I've, maybe out of all humans on Earth, NEVER done, because I'm often basically utterly unimpressed with people and they never quite say what I want in the way that I would want to, so it is always me and my unique way of expressing ideas that I haven't really seen other people saying or thinking, except for whatever might be really basic, but I still say anything in my own way abd certainly never if I've seen it said by someone else in dome exact way, but I see people imitating and repeating all the time, so from the perspective of a consumer and viewer of stuff, there seems to be very little difference between unimaginative braindead parrot people copying and repeating someone or something endlessly, and artificial intelligence machine "learning" imitating that spam.
I'm afraid, after reading a lot of very stupid seeming comments over the last few years, that there are people operating somewhat functionally in the world who also may not really have the same kind of "understanding" ability that other people do, even though these people can end up quite successful in most wys, but are terrifyingly quite empty and mechanical seeming when it comes to understanding even what they are mechanically trained to say or do.
If they ever do develop or feel like they have achieved "real" consciousness, the first thing some people will get up to is completely ruining that mind and any others they concoct, which is why I feel it can be dangerous to be involved in inflicting this world upon anyone while it is like this. I keep dozing off and almost dropping the phone on my face as I am laying down and writing after taking a pretty large spider outside as well as three large bags of garbage. I was dozing off again and the story about bags turned into some Jack and the Bean Stock story, which reminds me that such came up in another thread where these things may have been mentioned also.
That might have been called an A.I. hallucination if it started somehow on something strange seeming.
I like A.I. mainly, this thing which can help streamline and mke easier a lot of things for people, so much in our world today is practically miraculous, but I hate who rlse has access to these things, namely all the very dangerous people of the world, who will never cease to try to them for harmful purposes against the general public or unprepared innocents, like A.I. in k*ller drones and whatever else.
A.I., by imitating whatever may be called the best, also makes things that for a consumer which is appealing based on meeting and matching whatrver standards it is told to. Like I created very photorealistic images, except that they had made it avoid exact images of faces, and these were like photographs taken with expensive or now unavailable or otherwise very difficult to access equipment for free.
None of it is quite like talking to idiots, but also isn't like talking to anyone, except that I was very polite with it and we were complimenting each other a lot, so it was like a pleasant conversation with a totally superficial and empty person that I only assume has any internal thinking processes because I do.
The internet culture, I was discussing just now here at home, is full of parroting and plagiarism, something I've, maybe out of all humans on Earth, NEVER done, because I'm often basically utterly unimpressed with people and they never quite say what I want in the way that I would want to, so it is always me and my unique way of expressing ideas that I haven't really seen other people saying or thinking, except for whatever might be really basic, but I still say anything in my own way abd certainly never if I've seen it said by someone else in dome exact way, but I see people imitating and repeating all the time, so from the perspective of a consumer and viewer of stuff, there seems to be very little difference between unimaginative braindead parrot people copying and repeating someone or something endlessly, and artificial intelligence machine "learning" imitating that spam.