2. Philosophy - Stefano Franchi

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P HILOSOPHY, NON-PHILOSOPHY, AND SCIENCE
This line of defense seems quite reasonable. At least it shows that anyone wishing to
deny industrial respectability to AI bears the burden of a proof. However, the defensive
strategy points to a second, and deeper problem. It might be true that no one can predict
how long it is going to take to reach the crucial insight. But it is of course more than legit-
imate to ask which kind of insights are needed. In other words, it is legitimate to ask, what
is still missing and what should be found in order to be able to build intelligent artifacts.
Although the engineering aspect is clearly crucial to any definition of AI, it is not dif-
ficult to see why the latter cannot be “just” an engineering discipline like, for example, avi-
onics. It is not too difficult to understand what a an airplane is, presumably, and then start
working on how to design and build one. More importantly, even before airplanes actually
existed, it would not have been so difficult to figure out what would count as one, e.g. what
would be considered a successful example of a flying artifact. The issue is not so simple
with “human intelligence”. So much so, in fact, that the discussion of the test proposed by
Alan Turing to determine which behavior would be considered intelligent—discussions of
the test adequacy, shortcomings, etc.—occupies a relevant space in the literature about Ar-
tificial Intelligence. Thus, the study of the behavior—e.g. the clarification of the goal— that
AI allegedly will replicate on a machine takes up a significant fraction of the research ef-
forts. In other words, the engineering effort has to go hand in hand with a theoretical effort
since it calls for an understanding of intelligence that is logically, although not practically,
prior to the construction of the machine that will implement it. 27
The provisional definition given above tends to shift, in the declaration of AI practitio-
ners, to a more inclusive formulation that includes the more theoretical aspect. In a pro-
grammatic document about AI, John McCarthy offers a definition that balances very
elegantly both the practical and the theoretical issue facing AI as an engineering discipline:
27. It might be mentioned, as an aside, that philosophical reflections on and about Artificial Intelligence
carried out in Europe emphasize its engineering aspect much more that its American counterpart. This
is probably due to the institutional framework surrounding the research. In Europe, The study of computers’
hardware and software tends to be performed within the institutional boundaries of “Electronic
or “Electric Engineering” rather than in Computer Science departments, as in the US. As a (partial)
consequence, research in Artificial Intelligence tends also to assume a more practical orientation.