Artificial Intelligence and the Limits of Science

May 21, 2022 By David Weinberger

There exists s a tendency today to put too much faith in science. Consider, for example, the currently popular belief that scientific advances in Artificial Intelligence (AI) may one day enable robots to become “intelligent.” This idea is deeply problematic, and it is rooted in a fundamental belief that science is capable of explaining everything there is to know about the human person and about reality. But it is not.

For one thing, the idea that science can explain everything about us and about the world is not itself provable by science, since no empirical test can demonstrate it. Thus, it is really a philosophical position posing as a scientific one. Furthermore, science itself rests on philosophical foundations.

For example, science assumes the existence of the external world. This is not something science is capable of demonstrating, but something it must take for granted. Why? Because conducting an experiment to “prove” it presupposes the very data it is attempting to explain: Any instruments that might be used to test it are themselves parts of the external world, so they can be used only if they are first assumed to exist, which is the very issue the experiment is designed to test. Hence science cannot prove that the physical world is real, but must instead take it as a given.........To Read More.....