India, Sept. 29 -- The most intelligent mind of the 21st century may never enounce a single word. From childhood, we are taught to equate intelligence with language. A toddler's progress is measured in words - 'mama,' 'water,' 'ball.'
Our laws are written in words, our scriptures preserved in words, our politics decided by speeches. If something cannot be said, we assume it cannot be thought.
Artificial intelligence (AI) has been built in the same mould. The most powerful systems today - summarising legal documents, drafting business emails, generating poetry, all even in milliseconds - are trained on vast oceans of human text.
Their sharpness seems to confirm an old assumption: to think is to speak. But what if that assumption is wrong?...