[Crowbob]

In order for me to accept your analogy Z, I would also have to accept the notion that every painting I execute would necessarily be a masterpiece and replace the junk currently in the Louve one by one. But it probably won't (based solely on the knowledge that it hasn't-yet). All I know is that my painting is pleasing-even the one I have not yet painted. To what does that render my intelligence? Artificial? Human? Nonexistant?

Secondly, let us stipulate that my drone, Vermeer 2.0, sustained a power surge and created something more pleasing than the first Girl With A Pearl Earing. Are you saying that that painting is not the result of intelligence? If so, we would have to also eliminate the human terminology 'Happy Accident' from our vocabulary of the arts. But certainly there would be no need to improve the code and it may even be counterproductive to do so.

In truth, we need not concern ourselves with topics like emotions, morality, ethics, etc. because there certainly are intelligent humans without those qualities and many refer to them as artificial.

As I said before, and with which you disagree, at some point it becomes semantic.

Stomachmonkey: I could argue that your scenario is simply one of problem-solving. With enough data, a machine could locate and retrieve every one of your ingredients and enjoy a Tuscan picnic. But why would it? More probably the machine would be searching for a USB outlet to satisfy its hunger-or not. Your vignette was further interesting because just such a thing happened to me on the Autostrada beween Rome and Venice one fine September afternoon.