Popular opinion about artificial intelligence has passed through two phases. A generation ago, very few people believed that any machine could ever think as a man does. Now, however, it is widely held that this goal wiir be reached quite soon, perhaps in our lifetimes. It is my thesis that the second of these attitudes is nearly as unsophisticated as the first. Yesterday's skepticism was based on ignorance of the capacities of machines; today's con-
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Ulric Neisser (1963) studied this question.
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