From molecular cancer biologist Ahmed Alkhateeb at Aeon: Science is in the midst of a data crisis. Last year, there were more than 1.2 million new papers published in the biomedical sciences alone, bringing the total number of peer-reviewed biomedical papers to over 26 million. However, the average scientist reads only about 250 papers a […]
Artificial Intelligence
Selensky, Shallit, & Koza vs artificial life simulations
It’s always a pleasure to host Dr Selensky’s thoughtful contributions. Here, he tackles the subject of artificial life simulations and the implications of modelling environments, assumptions, algorithms etc: ____________________________ On Modelling Spontaneous Emergence of Programs and Their Evolutionary Self-Improvement Evgeny Selensky Some time ago, I left a comment on Jeffrey Shallit’s blog. We exchanged a […]
Dembski: Claims for artificial intelligence are overblown
From Bill Dembski at the Best Schools: The White House paper on automation rightly draws our attention to the challenges society faces from the coming disruptions to the job market on account of AI, and machine learning in particular. A real and imminent threat exists here, in which the middle-class could get severely hurt. But […]
Reminder of Christian Scientific Society Annual Meeting April 7-8
In Pittsburgh, including 12:00 PM Nik Melchior. “Machine Emulation of Human Thought” Artificial intelligence promises the development of computers with the same capabilities of cognition, perception, and problem-solving as their human inventors. Recent applications include self-driving cars, robots that work in factories, and computers able to best humans in games like Jeopardy, Chess, and Go. […]
Why AI won’t really replace people, despite its bad press
From Jerry Kaplan at Technology Review: Artificial intelligence, it seems, has a PR problem. While it’s true that today’s machines can credibly perform many tasks (playing chess, driving cars) that were once reserved for humans, that doesn’t mean that the machines are growing more intelligent and ambitious. It just means they’re doing what we built […]
“Crappy” AI more likely to kill us than super-AI?
From Michael Byrne at Motherboard: It’s not that computer scientists haven’t argued against AI hype, but an academic you’ve never heard of (all of them?) pitching the headline “AI is hard” is at a disadvantage to the famous person whose job description largely centers around making big public pronouncements. This month that academic is Alan […]
Is artificial intelligence taking over? (AlphaGo version)
From Ross Pomeroy’s ultimate list of Top Ten science stories at RealClearScience: Artificial Intelligence Defeats Go World Champion This year we witnessed artificial intelligence master a new game: Go. Lee Sedol, the reigning world champion predicted victory at the outset, but by the end of the five-game series he had won only a single bout […]
New Scientist: The Singularity is unlikely
From Toby Walsh at New Scientist: In December 2014, Stephen Hawking told the BBC that “the development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race… It would take off on its own, and redesign itself at an ever increasing rate. Humans, who are limited by slow biological evolution, couldn’t compete, and […]
Claim: Humanity and AI inseparable by 2021
From Russell Brandom at Verge: While some predict mass unemployment or all-out war between humans and artificial intelligence, others foresee a less bleak future. Professor Manuela Veloso, head of the machine learning department at Carnegie Mellon University, envisions a future in which humans and intelligent systems are inseparable, bound together in a continual exchange of […]
New Book: Philosophers, AI experts ask, are we living in an AI simulation? Will AI out think us?
From Bruce Sterling, reviewing The Singularity from Journal of Consciousness Studies, at New Scientist: Creating superintellingence may be inevitable, unless we are already living in a simulation. A collection of AI essays grapples with this weighty issue … While the book is a tremendous flight over the craggy AI landscape, it settles no disputes and […]
John Searle Talks to Google
John Searle gives a nice talk at Google about real intelligence vs. machine intelligence. The conversation is interesting for a number of reasons, including some historical background of Searle’s famous “Chinese Room Argument.”
Steve Fuller: Humans will merge with AI
From sociologist Steve Fuller, who has studied ID, at Telegraph: Stephen Hawking summed up the thinking of many of the researchers and funders behind artificial intelligence this week when he launched the new Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence at Cambridge by claiming that AI is “either the best or worst thing to happen […]
Assisted intelligence vs. artificial intelligence
From software engineer Brendan Dixon at Evolution News & Views: AI theorists consider what they call Artificial Generalized Intelligence (or AGI) the ultimate goal: The intelligence of an AGI would match or beat — if you believe Musk, Kurzweil, and the other true believers — human intelligence. For these theorists, AI’s recent successes, including Google’s […]
We are warned what to expect after robots gain consciousness
Not that anyone has the least idea what consciousness is. Science fiction short from Matt Gaede at Motherboard: I am a robot. I am alive in a lab. I have consciousness. I don’t believe my creators know it. Why would they make me? I have one task. One function, one ability. I can drive forward. […]
What? Robots can’t dance?
From Uri Bram at Nautilus: Human learning is always social, embodied, and occurs in specific practical situations. Mostly, you don’t learn to dance by reading a book or by doing experiments in a laboratory. You learn it by dancing with people who are more skilled than you. … Yes. In its first few decades, artificial […]