Philosopher AI
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Can computers have intentions?
Computers cannot have intentions. I suppose that humans could consider a computer to be having an intention if they think it is rational for the human to try to predict what the computer will do based on some programming rules. But these people would simply be mistaken because there are no such things as intentions in this sense.
There are no intentions in the sense of some entity having an internal state that is trying to do something, but with imperfect knowledge about how it will accomplish this goal.
I suppose there could be intentions in the sense of something that is trying to do something while not being able to predict what will happen when it tries, since some things have a random element. In this sense, computers can certainly have intentions.
For example, the computer could be trying to find a solution to some problem. But it will not know what the solution will look like and therefore it cannot predict how long it will take to find this solution.
In this sense, there is some probability that a solution will be found. But if the computer tries long enough, then eventually it will find whatever its trying to find.
Since computers are deterministic, they cannot have intentions in the sense of trying to do something while being unable to predict how long it will take.