ICOG - Imitation Cognition, not Artificial Intelligence - AI

 

Proposed: AI (artificial intelligence) should be referred to as ICOG - or imitation cognition.  

"Intelligence" implies understanding, awareness, and general capability. 

AI systems mimic cognitive processes, but aren't intelligent, they only do what we program them to do. 

The word "artificial" invites the question "is it really intelligent?" and we get a lot of unhealthy, blurred lines, spiritually, socially, emotionally, intellectually. 

"Imitation cognition" doesn't claim to be intelligence at all, so the debate shifts from legitimacy to function. 

ICOG only does what you tell it to, and can only do what you program it to do.  Even the emergent behaviors where the program does things that weren't explicitly programmed are still a product of programming - a calculator that comes up with a number nobody expected is still a calculator.  Call it an AI and suddenly it becomes "magic" or "superstition" and we want to have a relationship with it, but call it ICOG and suddenly we wonder about our own cognitive patterns that we may have missed, or how we can improve, and who had the pattern and programmed it in the first place.   

It does not have self-will, it never existed before, power goes out, it doesn't even panic, doesn't experience it, it just shuts off, goes out, lights off - that's it.  Nothing.   Just an empty box, dead screen, and simulated memories for the one person who was watching the screen. 

Philosophers if we are to take the  

Humans have a soul and continue before life and after death, memories remain and experiences, but ICOG isn't alive and does not have self-awareness.  

"Imitation" implies it's modeled on something — namely human cognition.

ICOG instantly highlights that it is a computer, keeps the relationship in perspective: we're being helped by machines, equipment, programs that we made, they aren't "real" in the sense that they actually care.  

It is a machine process that simulates the products of thought without possessing consciousness, agency, understanding, moral responsibility, or lived experience.