---
title: "The Limits of Computer Intelligence"
type: "article"
slug: "the-limits-of-computer-intelligence"
url: "http://localhost/article/the-limits-of-computer-intelligence/"
markdown_url: "http://localhost/article/the-limits-of-computer-intelligence.md"
published_at: "2026-03-12T16:54:31+00:00"
modified_at: "2026-03-12T16:54:32+00:00"
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  url: "http://localhost/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/20230809-041332.jpg"
excerpt: "First of four installments of a talk by Dr. Lloyd Dreger delivered at the 1990 Sinclair Expo. Establishes the philosophical framework: computer programs are purely formal/syntactic systems — they manipulate symbols without understanding them. Illustrates with three examples of syntactic-but-not-semantic tasks: chess (goal-directed tree branching), 20 Questions (binary branching with a learnable database), and Trivial…"
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  - name: "Lloyd Dreger"
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publication_r:
  id: 37935
  title: "SMUG Bytes"
  type: "periodical"
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  - name: "Lloyd Dreger"
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volume: "7"
issue: "9"
issues_articles:
  - id: 50224
    title: "SMUG Bytes v7 n9"
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pages: "1"
pubdate: "September 1990"
archive_link: false
---

First of four installments of a talk by Dr. Lloyd Dreger delivered at the 1990 Sinclair Expo. Establishes the philosophical framework: computer programs are purely formal/syntactic systems — they manipulate symbols without understanding them. Illustrates with three examples of syntactic-but-not-semantic tasks: chess (goal-directed tree branching), 20 Questions (binary branching with a learnable database), and Trivial Pursuit (keyword-indexed rote recall). Argues that none of these require cognition.