About whether AI can become intelligent from text alone, without senses like sight.
Has this happened?
Yes 71 (59%)Not sure 29 (24%)No 21 (17%)
Votes cast 1–2 October 2026: 100,590 votes from 9,694 people.
Hacker News has set AI a lot of challenges over the years. Which ones has it met?
About whether AI can become intelligent from text alone, without senses like sight.
Votes cast 1–2 October 2026: 100,590 votes from 9,694 people.
Are blind or deaf people not intelligent?
But if you must pretend to be sighted and hearing, there are many descriptions of green, of dogs barking, of motors, etc, scattered through the many books written in English (and other languages.)
Are these descriptions perfect? Maybe not. But they are sufficient to mimic or communicate with humans through text. It's sufficient to beat a Turing test, to answer questions intelligently, to write books and novels, and political arguments, etc. If that's not AGI, I don't know what is.