Is Embodied Intelligence a Necessity for Flexible, Adaptive Thinking?

What is intelligence? For some researchers, it may be quite possible to create an intelligent machine ‘in a box’, something without physical embodiment but with a powerful mind. Others believe general intelligence requires interaction with the outside world, inferring information from gestures and other features of functioning in an environment. Dr. Vincent Müller is of the belief that intelligence may involve more than just mental algorithms and may need to include the capacity to sense rather than just run a program. Vincent focuses on cognitive systems as an approach to AI, and in this episode he talks about what this means and implies, how this approach is different from classical AI, and what this might permit in the future if the field is developed.