This is just a note for record on what monism is (as opposed to dualism, Creation by a Supreme and maximally great and good being, etc). A useful point of departure is a diagram from Wikipedia on dualism (and they give only one type) vs monism: Wikipedia notes, next to this: Different types of monism Read More…
Artificial Intelligence
At last! Computer-generated sci babble papers to be “retracted”
The most likely reason one can think of for the persistence of computer-generated gibberish in the science database is that many other papers sound like that — but are in fact authentic human creations — so no one really wants to go there.
Is total control over thought via technocracy possible?
Let’s see what happens in China. This could be an important test of human exceptionalism.
Could artificial intelligence change the mind–body problem?
Angus Menuge: I don’t see any reason from these amazing enhancements of the complexity of these [computer] systems to think that the systems would move from not having subjective awareness to having it or from moving to true intentionality about anything beyond themselves.
Conundrum: What if you could make an exact duplicate of yourself?
The problems of replicating oneself are addressed in a funny sci-fi short on human selfhood: For one thing, the replicant doesn’t know that he is not the original. He has no reason to think so.
At Mind Matters News: Will humans ever be fully replaceable by AI?
Berger: “Man is an imperfect image of God, as we all regularly demonstrate. Some images are more degraded than others. Similarly, any image man creates of himself will be a less than perfect image of himself. Hence, man can never make AI that is in the image of God, He can only make a degraded image of himself. “
William Dembski: Why computers will likely never perform abductive inferences
Computers require complete data to come to a correct conclusion but humans often work very well with incomplete data.
William Dembski: Artificial intelligence understands by not understanding
Dembski continues to reflect on Erik J. Larson’s new book, The Myth of Artificial Intelligence: Why Computers Can’t Think the Way We Do (2021). He recalls his experiences learning to write boilerplate for a psychology chatbot back in 1982.
At Academic Influence: Jed Macosko interviews Erik J. Larson, author of The Myth of Artificial Intelligence
Larson explains what he hopes to convey to the reader about the limitations of Really Big Computers.
From Bill Dembski: Automated driving and other failures of AI
Dembski: in the cossetted and sanitized environments that we have constructed for ourselves in the U.S., have no clue of what capabilities AI actually needs to achieve to truly match what humans can do. The shortfall facing AI is extreme.
Science writer John Horgan explains how he came to doubt the AI apocalypse
Takehome: Horgan finds that, despite the enormous advances in neuroscience, genetics, cognitive science, and AI, our minds remain “as mysterious as ever.”
Bill Dembski on why Erik Larson says there will be no AI overlords
Abductive reasoning is part of design theory. Interesting that computers can’t do it…
Bill Dembski on how a new book expertly dissects doomsday scenarios
Dembski: “At the end of the discussion, however, Kurzweil’s overweening confidence in the glowing prospects for strong AI’s future were undiminished. And indeed, they remain undiminished to this day (I last saw Kurzweil at a Seattle tech conference in 2019 — age seemed to have mellowed his person but not his views).” But Larson says it’s all nonsense.
At Scientific American: Why we live in a simulation
This is likely intended as a spoof: “There is nothing in philosophy or science, no postulates, theories or laws, that would predict the emergence of this experience we call consciousness. Natural laws do not call for its existence, and it certainly does not seem to offer us any evolutionary advantages.” But it happens to be true.
Soon there will be computers that think like people?
Not so fast says economics prof Gary Smith: The failure of computer programs to recognize a rudimentary drawing of a wagon reveals the vast differences between artificial and human intelligence.