What AI Can Do: Strengths and Limitations of Artificial Intelligence

The philosopher Spinoza once asserted that no one knows what a body can do, conceiving an intrinsic bodily power with unknown limits. Similarly, we can ask ourselves about Artificial Intelligence (AI): To what extent is the development of intelligence limited by its technical and material substrate? In other words, what can AI do? The answer is analogous to Spinoza’s: Nobody knows the limit of AI.

Critically considering this issue from philosophical, interdisciplinary, and engineering persp...