Ask Lemmy

Considering that computers are Turing complete, yes they can, by definition. They can be used to compute anything that can be computed. The question you're probably really asking is can we make a functional agi with current technology. In a practical sense, no, in a theoretical sense, yes. In practice we can't because we don't know how. That knowledge is a form of technology that we haven't developed yet, though we may have all or most of the pieces available right now. We know that our computers should be able to do it, given enough memory and processing power, but hardware alone doesn't make an intelligence. You need the software too, and we just don't know how to make the leap from single purpose tools to general intelligence. Think of it like an airplane. We had all the pieces necessary to make one long before we ever did. We saw birds do it and tried to copy them. We had metal, wood, rope, rubber, cloth, everything you need physically to build a self propelled flying machine, for hundreds or thousands of years, but we didn't have the underlying principles, a working theory for how to put them together just so. That's where we are with agi. We have all the raw materials, and some of the complex pieces, but we're missing things that prevent us from taking that final step into a true agi, however limited.