The theory of computability is really the mathematics of the natural numbers and finite mathematical induction.
(R. P. Loui, "Some Philosophical Reflections on The Foundations of Computing", 1998)
Finally, I've found
a mathematician an engineer who seems to see what I see. Since natural numbers and finite mathematical induction don't represent a very powerful toolbox for "intelligence" to pull from, most researchers and developers in AI don't want to accept them as their limit. For more than 50 years now, they've tried to find new tools. Were any new tools found? No - now, as then, computation is just rule-following, and any program you can write in Ruby on Rails, you can write in Assembler. Have people stopped trying? No.
But ultimately, they will. And when that happens, and people start getting creative within that limit, this whole AI thing will get
so much more interesting ;-)
