• Auli@lemmy.ca
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    4
    arrow-down
    3
    ·
    edit-2
    2 months ago

    NPCs do not have any form of intelligence and don’t decide anything. Or is Windows intelligent cause I click an icon and it decides to do something?

    • Farid@startrek.website
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      6
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      2 months ago

      In a way, yes, if you frame it right. To simplify, you’re basically asking “is a calculator intelligent?”, right? While it’s an inanimate object, you could say that, in a way, it acquires knowledge from the buttons user presses and it applies knowledge to provide an output.

      “But that’s not making decisions, it’s just circuits!”, you might say. To which I might reply “Who’s to say that you’re making decisions? For all we know, human brains might also just be very complicated circuits with no agency at all, just like the calculator!”.

      IIRC, in his book The Singularity Is Near, Ray Kurzweil even assigns certain amount of intelligence to inanimate objects, such as rocks. A very low amount of course, and it might be a stretch, but still.

      So yeah, it’s really hard to draw a line for intelligence, which is why there’s no firm definition and no consensus.