Just the facts, Ms. AI

Can an artificial intelligence really think?

On the old Dragnet television program, which aired in the United States from 1951 to 1959, the protagonist, Detective Sergeant Joe Friday, always says to women witnesses to crime, “Just the facts, ma’am.” This exhortation is to distinguish between what they actually observed and what they thought or felt about it.[1] The “facts” are basically what they saw.

First off, we believe in facts that others have handed on to us, often without ways of directly verifying the data. Indeed, it would be impossible to live if we always had to verify every single fact in order to think. Even in Missouri (“the Show-Me State”), the inhabitants have to take a great deal on trust.

A fact comes to our awareness as a declarative statement, either in language or mathematical formulæ (which is also a language…). It often contains bona fides, references to those trustworthy sources who have ascertained that it is true. “I saw on the internet that So-and-so is the richest person on Earth,” one person claims to be a fact because it was found on the digital superhighway. “No, I read in the newspaper that Thus-and-such is actually the richest person on Earth,” replies the other. So who is the richest person on Earth?

Besides asking why anyone should care, resolving this difference requires finding a truly…