Abstract

Whether machines think remains a contemporary question in face rapid sciencetech developments. However, developments in humanoid-AI and the increasing human dependency on AI in decision making, generation of contents for defining realities and trust on their consistencies beg the question whether their outputs are still just mechanical. Using critical realism methodology, the study aims at analizing the operational modes AI and that of Descartes’ thinking-thing. The achieved objectives include; examining operational relations between humanoid-AI and Descartes’ thinking-self; examining possibilities of characterizing humanoid-AI operations as thinking in its capacities of processing and iteration of billions of information-data; and establishing basis for humanizing humanoid-AI under Descartes’ view on what being human entails. The study concludes that thinking is characteristic of processing and what humanoid-AI does to produce results is also processing which is characteristic of thinking. Therefore, processing being characteristic of thinking is a condition to categorize humanoid-AI as Descartes’ thinking-thing.

 
Keywords: Processing, Thinking mind, Humanoid, Artificial intelligence, Epistemology