Machine Intelligence

Under certain conditions, we appear willing to see and interact with computing machines as though they exhibited intelligence, at least an intelligence of sorts. Using examples from Al and robotics research, as well as a selection of relevant art installations and anthropological fieldwork, this paper reflects on some of our interactions with the kinds of machines we seem ready to treat as intelligent. Broadly, it is suggested that ordinary, everyday ideas of intelligence are not fixed, but rather actively seen and enacted in the world. As such, intelligence does not just belong to the province of the human mind, but can emerge in quite different, unexpected forms in things. It is proposed this opens up a new set of possibilities for design and HCI; examining the ways intelligence is seen and enacted gives rise to a very different way of thinking about the intersection between human and machine, and thus promotes some radically new types of interactions with computing machines.