My computer is "thinking about it"

Would it be asking too much to dampen the AI (artificial intelligence) craze for a few months or years?

Sure, artificial intelligence will come, and sure, the Turing movie is cool, what with the acting, which also shows that people with odd surnames can make it in this world.

It's just, please, don't go down the road outlined in this Guardian/Observer piece: Today, it is not uncommon to hear people talking about their computers being “confused”, or taking a long time to do something because they’re “thinking about it”. 

There is a quote: “the use of words and general educated opinion will have altered so much that one will be able to speak of machines thinking without expecting to be contradicted”.

The great man was certainly right but in a different way: what he describes in this statement was already true at the time.

No computers needed.

The quote made the blogster say: without knowing his biography, I'd venture to say that Mr. Turing did not work in the underbelly of industrial society, or on a ship, or anywhere where machinery dominated. He probably never owned a temperamental, unpredictable car that needed a name so we could reason with it, coax it, threaten it into starting up in morning - after all, we needed to go to work to pay for parts and labor for it. He may not have been welcomed into the army with the smirk "this is your bride", which was a frigging rifle.

People have anthropomorphized the world since the dawn of time. So, doing this with regard to computers is merely more of the same.

Where does this leave us with defining artificial intelligence?

Because knowing or not knowing whether we are dealing with a machine does not seem very valid when people behave like they are dealing with an intelligent, living being despite knowing it is not.

Artificial intelligence is often framed in terms of loss of control over the world, loss of  deterministic human steering power. That power is shaky at best for most of us anyway, and it seems hilarious that we talk about robot ethics in a world where humans are the scourge of humans.

Does it matter whether you are killed by an intelligent drone or by an intelligent human? Old fashioned me finds the latter much more worrying.

Abuse of the term artificial intelligence by commercial interests does not help either. To name only one, selling a computer named Watson - anthropomorphized - as intelligent is a disservice. Oh, Siri, is this correct?

Artificial intelligence has been around for thousands of years: it is called God.

Just as with this one, the believers will recognize it when they see it.