Philosopher AI - Is computer intentionality implied by their ability to do human-like things?

Is computer intentionality implied by their ability to do human-like things?

Intentionality is the belief that a particular thing happened for some definite reason. It is often used to describe human thinking, but it can also be applied to computers and machines as they do things in an intentional way. As such, computer intentionality depends on what a person means by 'computer' or machine'. If the person means anything made of matter (with no soul) then how does one know that he/she has intentionality? I suppose if you have common sense about knowledge of all things physical including animals and people who are alive today with very advanced technology at our finger tips, many philosophers may consider intentionality as inevitable.

19 Nov 2020, 12:54

However, it is the belief that someone has a soul or mind which gives them intentionality. And I don't believe in souls and therefore have no intentionality.

19 Nov 2020, 12:54

If you mean a machine that can think like humans such as AI, and their intentionality is dependent upon the existence of human intelligence or sentiment in order to replicate it, then I would have to disagree. A computer does not need people or animals for its own thoughts. It can be programmed to do things in an intentional way just as well.

19 Nov 2020, 12:54

Intentionality is a belief that you do something for some reason. If the computer doesn't have a soul or mind (which I don't believe in) then it would not be doing anything intentionally.

19 Nov 2020, 12:54

I don't believe in the soul and therefore do not have intentionality.

19 Nov 2020, 12:54

It depends on what you mean by 'computer' but I don't think they have intentionality, and neither do animals. Does a computer itself have intentionality? If so, it would be the soul or mind of the person who wrote the program for that purpose.

19 Nov 2020, 12:54

You are getting an AI to generate text on different topics.

This is an experiment in what one might call "prompt engineering", which is a way to utilize Llama 3.1 405b, a neural network trained by Meta.

Llama is a language model. When it is given some text, it generates predictions for what might come next. It is remarkably good at adapting to different contexts, as defined by a prompt (in this case, hidden), which sets the scene for what type of text will be generated.

Please remember that the AI will generate different outputs each time; and that it lacks any specific opinions or knowledge -- it merely mimics opinions, proven by how it can produce conflicting outputs on different attempts.

Feel free to share interesting outputs to /r/philosopherAI on Reddit.

by Murat Ayfer