AI, Naturally Considered

Not long since morphing from sci-fi speculation to keyboard gizmo, artificial intelligence seems poised tomorrow to block out the sun – and is panicking the public in kind. Are com­puters poised to re­place us? Are we threat­ened by end­less leisure? Will we for­get how to read and write, or our children how to google? Am I missing out on an invest­ment trend?

In his new book, Intelligenz und Phantasie – Zwei Essays zu künstlicher und menschlicher Intelligenz (Intelligence and Imagination – Two Essays on Artificial and Human Intelligence; pub. Parodos, Berlin 2025) cognitive scientist Thomas Raab addresses what constitutes intel­ligence from a scien­tific perspec­tive and whether, as is good prac­tice in science, it can even be co­herently defined, behavioral­ly measured, and assessed. The rather mono­tonous discus­sion of whether current gene­rative computer pro­grams are intelligent serves as a spring­board for more in­teresting questions about the human or­ganism.

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THOMAS RAAB (b. 1968) is a Vienna-based writer, cognitive scientist, and visiting lecturer with a background in the natural sciences. Most recently, he co-edited Oswald Wieners Theorie des Denkens (Oswald Wiener’s Theory of Thought; pub. De Gruyter, Berlin, 2023).