Imagine this: You tell your wife that the important financial papers are in an envelope. She’s worried until you explain that the envelope is in the safe deposit box. If you know the usual language game that involves the word in, you know the papers are safe in the bank.
But that’s not the only way we use the word in. Imagine that you are in pain. Your wife asks where it hurts, and you explain the pain is in your foot. If you put your foot in your shoe, is the pain now in the shoe? Do we need to run the shoe to the emergency room?
That’s an old story, the kind told by ordinary language philosophers in 1950s.
I thought of it because I read yet another baffling article on this strange and wonderful thing we unfortunately call “artificial intelligence.” I would love to know exactly what this technology is and how it can and can’t be used. But I don’t think “intelligence” is going to be a useful way to talk about it.
I don’t think the intelligence is in the machine. But I don’t think the pain is in the shoe either.
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