AI is everywhere. I am sure people are now organizing introductory classes in kindergartens because the future generation has to be prepared for it (whether they will be the slaves or masters of AI is yet to be determined), the sooner you start, the better, or so the thinking goes.

But it’s not the kindergarten I am worried about; it’s higher structures like governments, businesses, and culture that seem to be falling for this mindlessly.

I understand the context better than 99% of the posters on AI, perhaps 99.9% because I studied the Philosophy of Mind (alternatively called AI in those days) in the late 80s at the University of Toronto. While I haven’t been involved in AI academic discussions on a full-time basis since then, I followed it closely over the decades. Hence, I am confident my understanding of AI is far superior to the general gibberish found anywhere in the mainstream.

First, let’s be clear about what people mean when they say AI.

• There is predictive analytics: essentially statistical data analysis on steroids. Useful? Yes. But let’s put it aside — it has nothing to do with “intelligence.”
• Then there are LLMs (Large Language Models) like ChatGPT. This is the thing everyone today calls AI.

And it’s here where the real philosophical and scientific problem begins.
The AI question arose with the invention of computers in the 1950s. Not surprisingly, Alan Turing — father of the computer — gave AI its original definition.

Turing suggested that if a machine could pass a human conversation test (the famous Turing Test) — meaning a human couldn’t tell whether they were talking to a person or a computer — then the machine must be considered “intelligent.”
It was a practical definition, widely accepted… until computers began to appear close to passing the test. Then the cracks showed.

By the 1980s, Philosophy of Mind exploded. One objection in particular, by John Searle, remains devastating: the Chinese Room Argument.

Imagine a group of people in a room who don’t know Chinese. They have a giant rulebook: when shown certain Chinese characters, they mechanically manipulate symbols to produce matching characters. To an outside observer, the group “speaks Chinese.” But do they understand Chinese? Of course not.

“Understanding” makes a human being a human being. If understanding is one of the main a characteristics of being human and human means “intelligent”, then by definition AI is not intelligent and hence AI is not Artificial Intelligence but artificial “Something else”.

But actually it’s not even “artificial” anymore, because the whole idea of artificial was that it was “intelligence” but not human, that is other, “artificial”. Hence “Artifical Intelligence” is neither “artificial” nor is it “intelligence”.

This highlights the deceptive and misleading nature of the entire “AI” industry. And that’s just the name, I haven’t even gotten into the content.

If AI is not intelligence, why do we keep pretending it is?

Why do governments, businesses, and consulting firms keep selling the illusion of “Artificial Intelligence”?

Because it sells. Not because it’s true.

AI will not make us smarter. It will only expose how immature our existing systems, architectures, and institutions already are.

The question is not how fast you adopt AI. The question is: are you mature enough to survive it?