Artificial Intelligence

As philosopher Richard Johns explains, sims do not understand simhood: How can Alice determine whether the strange little man in her apartment who claims to be her Programmer is telling the truth? Recently, philosopher Richard Johns (left), whose work was profiled here at Mind Matters News in “A philosopher explains why thinking matter is impossible,” has now written a piece for Medium. In it, he explains why we cannot create a sim that is a conscious, rational being. He uses a dialogue between “Alice” and “The Programmer” to unpack the idea: The dialogue begins with Alice returning from school to find a strange little man in her apartment. He seemed not to notice her entering the room, and remained seated Read More ›

Surprising results from computer programs do not equate to creativity, says computer scientist Selmer Bringsjord. Is there such a thing as machine creativity? The feats of machines like AlphaGo are due to superior computational power, not to creativity at originating new ideas. Computer scientist Selmer Bringsjord sees the ability to write, say, a novel of ideas as a more realistic test of human vs. computer achievement. “And probably the world’s leading authority on musical creativity, David Cope, does say explicitly that if the machine can do problem-solving, it catches people by surprise, he would stick to his guns and say that’s creative. I absolutely reject that notion. I think the next step up is MacGuyver creativity—what I called N creativity Read More ›

The Turing test has had a free ride in science media for far too long, says an AI expert: In the view of Rensselaer philosopher and computer scientist Selmer Bringsjord, the iconic Turing test for human-like intelligence in computers is inadequate and easily gamed. Merely sounding enough like a human to fool people does not establish human-like intelligence. He proposes the much more challenging Lovelace test, based on an observation from computer pioneer Ada Lovelace (1815–1852) that true creativity is what distinguishes humans from machines. – Mind Matters News Further reading: No materialist theory of consciousness is plausible. All such theories either deny the very thing they are trying to explain, result in absurd scenarios, or end up requiring an Read More ›

A scientific test should identify precisely what humans can do that computers cannot, avoiding subjective opinion: The “broken checkerboard” is not the ultimate scientific test for intelligence that we need. But it is a truly scientific test in the sense that it is capable of falsifying the theory that the mind is reducible to computation. Eric Holloway, “A scientific test for true intelligence” at Mind Matters News See also: Current artificial intelligence research is unscientific. The assumption that the human mind can be reduced to a computer program has never really been tested. Because AI research is based on a fundamental assumption that has not been scientifically tested—that the human mind can be reduced to a computer—then the research itself cannot be Read More ›