It’s almost as if we’re missing something:
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Architects of Intelligence: The truth about AI from the people building it (2018) compiled by futurist Martin Ford (23 experts) and Possible Minds: Twenty-Five Ways of Looking at AI (2019), compiled by John Brockman (25 experts) offer a total of 45 experts foretelling our future. Some experts, Rodney Brooks (Rethink Robotics), Judea Pearl (UCLA), and Stuart Russell (UC Berkeley), were interviewed for both books, which is why the number sums to 45, not 48.
The major disagreements among contributors to both Architects of Intelligence and Possible Minds (2019) are the classic ones: Whether AI will have human-like intelligence and/or wipe us out. And yet, as a reviewer of both books notes, the essayists seem haunted by the specter of another “AI winter” when advances hit a ceiling and stall, perhaps for decades.
Software engineer Brendan Dixon notes that “Roughly every decade since the late 1960s has experienced a promising wave of AI that later crashed on real-world problems, leading to collapses in research funding.” He offers some context … “Artificial Intelligence: Prophets in Conflict” at Mind Matters News
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See also: What Are the “Architects of Intelligence” actually designing? Even their polite disagreements are fairly substantial. But future apocalypses offer a hidden benefit: Whether they ever happen or not, they distract us from critical thinking about present-day issues.
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Possible Minds?: But What If the Minds Are IMpossible? Suppose we actually can’t create thinking AI? How would THAT change the world? What if human-like AI turns out to be impossible because reasoning is not calculation and calculators do not reason?
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