Artificial Intelligence

In recent weeks, UD has been looking at the logic of being of minded intelligence, especially, embodied intelligence. One of the pivotal insights is outlined by Victor Reppert — pardon a bit of review: . . . let us suppose that brain state A [–> notice, state of a wetware, electrochemically operated computational substrate], which is token identical to the thought that all men are mortal, and brain state B, which is token identical to the thought that Socrates is a man, together cause the belief [–> concious, perceptual state or disposition] that Socrates is mortal. It isn’t enough for rational inference that these events be those beliefs, it is also necessary that the causal transaction be in virtue of Read More ›

Fun with the grammar we take for granted: Groucho Marx (1890–1977) used to start one of his quips with “I once shot an elephant in my pajamas.” That seems clear enough but then he follows up with “How he got into my pajamas I’ll never know.” The punch line depends on the ambiguity of the question. At first, we interpret the words in a common-sense way; we assume that Groucho was wearing his own pajamas. The joke consists in surprising us with a grammatically possible but fantastic alternative. Contemporary comedian Emo Phillips quips that ambiguity is the devil’s volleyball.1 Computers have no sense of humor. Given the sentence without context, they don’t have a clue who is wearing Groucho’s pajamas. Read More ›

You, by the way, are doomed: Everything has a history, including Silicon Valley. According to a new media theorist, Douglas Rushkoff, an influential Valley philosophy might underlie the current attitudes, values, and beliefs: “There is a Silicon Valley religion, and it’s one that doesn’t particularly care for people — at least not in our present form. Technologists may pretend to be led by a utilitarian, computational logic devoid of superstition, but make no mistake: There is a prophetic belief system embedded in the technologies and business plans coming out of Google, Uber, Facebook, and Amazon, among others.” Denyse O’Leary, “Silicon Valley’s strange, apocalyptic cult” at Mind Matters News It would explain a lot of crazy. See also: The idol with Read More ›

One of the challenges of our day is the commonplace reduction of intelligent, insightful action to computation on a substrate. That’s not just Sci Fi, it is a challenge in the academy and on the street — especially as AI grabs more and more headlines. A good stimulus for thought is John Searle as he further discusses his famous Chinese Room example: The Failures of Computationalism John R. Searle Department of Philosophy University of California Berkeley CA The Power in the Chinese Room. Harnad and I agree that the Chinese Room Argument deals a knockout blow to Strong AI, but beyond that point we do not agree on much at all. So let’s begin by pondering the implications of the Read More ›

A recent news item suggests that AI may help bring fusion power to the table on the long used but challenging Tokamak toroidal reactor architecture. This would be a major positive use of AI technology, if it proves sufficiently reliable: Artificial intelligence (AI), a branch of computer science that is transforming scientific inquiry and industry, could now speed the development of safe, clean and virtually limitless fusion energy for generating electricity. A major step in this direction is under way at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) and Princeton University, where a team of scientists working with a Harvard graduate student is for the first time applying deep learning — a powerful new version of Read More ›