What is Intelligence and Can a Computer have it?
The advent of modern artificial intelligence has transformed and will, almost certainly, continue to transform our world in unprecedented ways. But is “artificial intelligence” truly a kind of intelligence? The name by itself does not suggest an answer this question since the word ‘artificial’ can mean different things. For example, “artificial flavors” really are flavors, but an “artificial leg” is not a leg, but a leg-substitute.
In this talk, Fr. Raphael Mary will provide some philosophical tools for thinking through the question of whether it is possible (and, perhaps even already the case) for machines, such as computers, to be intelligent.
Fr. Raphael Mary Salzillo, O.P. is an assistant professor of philosophy at the Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology (DSPT) in Berkeley, CA. He grew up on the Oregon coast and converted to the Catholic Faith in high school. He studied applied physics for seven years at Caltech and UC San Diego before entering the Dominican Order in 2001. Fr. Raphael Mary was ordained a priest in 2009 and, after working in campus ministry for a few years, completed a PhD in philosophy at the University of Notre Dame in 2019. He went on to teach philosophy for four years at the University of St. Thomas in Houston, before returning to the Bay Area in 2023, to teach at the DSPT.
