Mind Matters Natural and Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis

Monthly Archive December 2022

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Macro concept of a brain connecting to pure love and intent

Why Many Researchers Now See the Brain as a Quantum System

The hypothesis is that the brain relies on quantum physics, not classical physics, to power thinking processes

Astrophysicist and science writer Elizabeth Fernandez asks us to consider whether quantum processes might help us understand better how the brain works and shed light on consciousness: Some scientists suspect that quantum processes, including entanglement, might help us explain the brain’s enormous power, and its ability to generate consciousness. Recently, scientists at Trinity College Dublin, using a technique to test for quantum gravity, suggested that entanglement may be at work within our brains. If their results are confirmed, they could be a big step toward understanding how our brain, including consciousness, works. Elizabeth Fernandez, “Brain experiment suggests that consciousness relies on quantum entanglement” at Big Think (November 22, 2022) The paper is open access. Her thesis is that the brain Read More ›

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decisions

The Orville 3 8: The Writers Finally Figured Out Moral Ambiguity

Is it right to endanger the lives of many to save one? The Orville crew must confront that in the case of the Moclan girl Topa

Judging by my mixed emotions regarding the Episode 8 from Season 3, I’d say the writers did fairly well with tackling a morally ambiguous story. There are still problems, but nothing that damages the story. For once, the writers do not scream their opinions at the audience. They even chose two likable characters to act as surrogates for the opposing points of view. As the story opens, Topa wants to meet Heveena, the female Moclan who defended her in court when she was a baby and tried to prevent the all-male (by preference) race from turning her into a boy. Heveena was unable to convince the Moclans to spare Topa, but the young girl later learned the truth and was Read More ›

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Newspapers and Laptop. Different Concepts for News -  Network or Traditional Tabloid Journals. Data Sources - Electronic Screen of Computer or Paper Pages of Magazines, Internet or Papers

Layoffs at Washington Post Show Direction of Mainstream Media

As their role has changed so much, they simply no longer have a mass popular base

The Washington Post has started layoffs and it isn’t pretty: The Washington Post’s all-hands meeting turned chaotic Wednesday after the newspaper’s publisher announced looming layoffs – and then left the room as concerned employees shouted questions. The Jeff Bezos-owned broadsheet will conduct a round of layoffs during the first quarter of 2023, publisher Fred Ryan announced during what was supposed to be an hour-long meeting. Thomas Barrabi, “Washington Post announces layoffs during tense town hall before publisher Fred Ryan storms out” at New York Post (December 14, 2022) This follows the CNN layoff of hundreds of staffers, announced at the end of November and described as a gut punch to the organization. The laid-off include such figures as Chris Cillizza, Read More ›

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The face of a businessman and a robot opposite each other look into the eyes. Modern technologies, robot versus human, artificial intelligence, neural networks. 3D render, 3D illustration.

C-Span asks Marks: How Can AI Be Made Sentient? Innovative?

If they were hoping for a computers to be their best buddies, they might be disappointed in the computer engineer’s answer

Walter Bradley Center director Robert J. Marks was a guest at C-SPAN 2 TV in July, discussing his book, Non-Computable You: What You Do That Artificial Intelligence Never Will (Discovery Institute Press, 2022), and we now have the transcript as well as the video: Here’s the link to the video. Excerpt: Peter Slen: Professor Marks, what’s the missing element in artificial intelligence? To make it sentient. To make it innovative too… The premise of my book is that it will never be there. There are certain things which are non computable. This goes back to the genius Alan Turing in the 1930s. Now, Turing is probably best known for helping crack the Enigma code that helped win World War II Read More ›

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Border Collie puppies

Can a Dog Be Bred To Be As Smart As a Human?

An enterprising electrical engineer thinks it can be done

Within one hundred generations or roughly 600 years? That’s the project Payton Pearson, an electrical engineer who gives his affiliation as the Air Force Institute of Technology in Dayton, Ohio, has set himself: Artificial selection is a well-known phenomenon of selecting for certain physiological characteristics of various species of plants and animals, and it is something that human beings have been doing for thousands of years. A perfect example of this is the union and development of dogs under human stewardship since the beginning of the agricultural era of society. In that time, approximately 6,000 years [1], dogs have been artificially selected in such a way as to produce thousands of different breeds. From the stout Dachshund, a dog breed Read More ›

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Bitcoin chasing businessman in cryptocurrency price crash

FTX Implosion: There Are Warning Signs from Binance

The CEO of Binance fundamentally misrepresented the character of the firm's engagement of the Mazars auditing firm

Since the implosion of FTX, many have been watching cryptocurrency exchange Binance to see if it might be the next crypto firm to face a liquidity crunch. While the CEO of Binance, known in the crypto world as CZ (Changpeng Zhao), has assured investors and depositors that the firm is financially sound, many of its recent moves have left observers wondering if there is more to the story. The Audit that Wasn’t The first major red flag was the “audit.” Binance has long been criticized for failure to provide audited financial statements. Because it is not a public company, an audit is not a legal requirement. Nonetheless, many crypto watchers view the failure to have an external audit as evidence of concern Read More ›

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Non-Computable You: Bradley Center Celebrates Human Creativity in 2022

Humans are unique and will never be replaced by the machines they invent.

Note: Mind Matters News is made possible by support from the Walter Bradley Center for Natural and Artificial Intelligence, a project of the non-profit Discovery Institute. Here is a report of our activities for 2022. If you benefit from the work of Mind Matters News, could you donate to support our work in 2023? Humans are unique and will never be replaced by the machines they invent. That was the powerful takeaway from this year’s new book by Walter Bradley Center Director Robert J. Marks, Non-Computable You: What You Do that Artificial Intelligence Never Will. The release of Marks’ book was one of many ways that the Bradley Center advanced its mission in 2022 to defend human dignity and creativity Read More ›

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Disintegrating reaching hands concept illustration in vaporwave style color palette isolated on blue background.

What is Art Without the Human Mind?

AI art tools can wow us with technical skill, but fail to generate meaning

There’s no doubt that tools like OpenAI can create impressive, detailed renderings of images. Type in “Master Yoda riding a musk ox in Taiwan” and you’ll get…something. A friend of mine sent me a two-headed bunny dressed as Obi-Wan Kenobi and a few other comic horrors, and I knew he’d been playing around with an AI art tool. But, it doesn’t take much reflection to feel that something important is missing in these artificially generated images. Sure, they’re detailed and colorful, and accurate. You can type in a scene and have it pop up on command. However, what do actual human artists think of these tools, and what do they essentially miss? Artist Peter Mohrbacher gave a balanced assessment of Read More ›

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Digital chatbot, robot application, conversation assistant, AI Artificial Intelligence concept.

Did the GPT3 Chatbot Pass the Lovelace Creativity Test?

The Lovelace Test determines whether the computer can think creatively. We found out…

The GPT-3 chatbot is awesome AI. Under the hood, GPT3 is a transformer model that uses sequence-to-sequence deep learning that can produce original text given an input sequence. In other words, GPT-3 is trained by using how words are positionally related. The arrangement of words and phrases to create well-formed sentences in a language is called syntax. Semantics is the branch of linguistics concerned with the meanings of words. GPT-3 trains on the syntax of training data to learn and generate interesting responses to queries. This was the intent of the programmers. GPT-3 is not directly concerned with semantics. Given a tutorial on a topic from the web, for example, GPT-3 does not learn from the tutorial’s teaching, but only Read More ›

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Venus flytrap is one of the carnivore plants

A Science Writer Makes the Case for Plants as Conscious Beings

Annaka Harris, neuroscience and physics writer, starts by casting doubt on human consciousness

Annaka Harris, a science writer focusing on neuroscience and physics and the author of Conscious: A Brief Guide to the Fundamental Mystery of the Mind (2019), challenges us to reflect on two points: 1) In a system that we know has conscious experiences — the human brain — what evidence of consciousness can we detect from the outside? 2) Is consciousness essential to our behavior? The editor notes, introducing an excerpt from the book, “But how sure can we be that plants aren’t conscious? And what if what we take to be behavior indicating consciousness can be replicated with no conscious agent involved? Annaka Harris invites us to consider the real possibility that our intuitions about consciousness might be mere Read More ›

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A television anchorwoman at studio

As the Twitter Files Drop, Ponder the Future of Mainstream Media

Mainstream media are largely ignoring the story for reasons that go to the heart of their own growing weakness and unstoppable decline

The Twitter files, as Elon Musk’s publication of Twitter’s internal censorship records — via dissident journalists — has come to be known, continue to drop. To recap, the drop started with the suppression of the story, on the eve of an election, about Hunter Biden’s seemingly incriminating laptop (Matt Taibbi). It continued with information about widespread shadowbanning (Bari Weiss), a practice the company denied it engaged in. Twitter files slice 3 and slice 4 (given by Musk to journalist Michael Shellenberger) address Twitter’s ban on former U.S. president Donald Trump. Slice 5 (Bari Weiss) detail doubts among Twitter employees about censoring on that scale: 7. There were dissenters inside Twitter. “Maybe because I am from China,” said one employee on Read More ›

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Coronavirus Pandemic. A disinfector in a protective suit and mask sprays disinfectants in office. Protection agsinst COVID-19 disease. Prevention of spreding pneumonia virus with surfaces.

When the Chinese Had Had Enough, Their Government Had To Listen

Embarrassingly, Xi had already declared victory over the virus in 2020, touting authoritarian governments as better able to respond

“The political object is the goal, war is the means of reaching it, and means can never be considered in isolation from their purpose.” (von Clausewitz, On War) Beijing’s zero-Covid policy was not sustainable. The highly publicized events in October and November in Urumqi, Xinjiang and at the Zhengzhou Foxconn factory served as the inciting events for what became a nationwide call for ending zero-Covid, giving people their freedoms — and there were even calls for Xi Jinping to step down. In the course of a week, Beijing went from touting zero-Covid to easing restrictions to censoring mentions of zero-Covid policy online. In November in Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang, several residents, including four children, died in an apartment fire Read More ›

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sign requesting no profanity.

Researchers: Profanity Has Some Elements of a Universal Language

They found that, in a number of languages, profanity omits certain sounds and stresses others

In a study, researchers found that, across different languages, swear words tended to lack soundssuch as l, r, and w: Shiri Lev-Ari and Ryan McKay from Royal Holloway, University of London conducted a pilot study with speakers of five unrelated languages (20 individuals per language) and asked them to list the most offensive words they knew in their language, excluding racial slurs. The initial study revealed that swear words were less likely to include approximants, which include sounds like l, r, w and y. The authors suggest that approximants may be less suitable than other sounds for giving offense and investigated this in two further studies. Springer, “The universal sound of swearing across languages” at Eurekalert (December 5, 2022) The Read More ›

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Machine learning , artificial intelligence, ai, deep learning blockchain neural network concept.

How Google’s LaMDA Resolved an Old Conflict in AI

Will two conflicting views always be in opposition? Or can they sometimes be resolved at a higher level?

In the movie Fiddler on the Roof there is a debate at one point. After listening to the cases made, a listener agrees with conclusions made from both sides of a conflict. Someone points out that “they can’t both be right!” to which the agreeable listener says “You know, you are also right.” Interestingly, the claim that the two sides of an issue will always be in opposition is not always true. The two sides can be in apparent conflict and both be right. Sometimes, but not always. The classic example is the blind men and the elephant. After feeling the elephant’s leg, one blind man says the elephant is like a tree. After feeling the elephant’s tail, another says the elephant Read More ›

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Tribe of Prehistoric Hunter-Gatherers Wearing Animal Skins Stand Around Bonfire Outside of Cave at Night. Portrait of Neanderthal / Homo Sapiens Family Doing Pagan Religion Ritual Near Fire

Our Ancestors Were Cooking Much Earlier Than Thought

The more we learn about early humans, the more sophisticated we find their culture to be

Recent findings suggest that some things we take for granted in human civilizations are much older than thought. Now, these findings are provisional but they are worth looking at: The owl stones from 5,500 and 4,750 years ago may be children’s art: But new research suggests the palm-sized plaques decorated in geometric patterns and with two engraved circles at the top might be the work of children. Numbering in the thousands and made from slate, the owl-like objects – previously dated the stone objects to be between 5,500 and 4,750 years old – may be “the archaeological trace of playful and learning activities carried out by youngsters,” according to the team of Spanish researchers behind the new study… They suggest Read More ›

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Near death experience ascend up towards the light in the dark tunnel

Study: 1 in 5 Cardiac Patients May Have Near-Death Experience

The researchers found spikes of brain activity, including so-called gamma, delta, theta, alpha, and beta waves up to an hour into CPR

Recent research shows that one in five people who survive cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) after a heart attack ‘may describe lucid experiences of death that occurred while they were seemingly unconscious and on the brink of death”: Led by researchers at NYU Grossman School of Medicine and elsewhere, the study involved 567 men and women whose hearts stopped beating while hospitalized and who received CPR between May 2017 and March 2020 in the United States and United Kingdom. Despite immediate treatment, fewer than 10% recovered sufficiently to be discharged from hospital. Survivors reported having unique lucid experiences, including a perception of separation from the body, observing events without pain or distress, and a meaningful evaluation of life, including of their actions, Read More ›

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Somewhere in extreme deep space far galaxies and habitable exoplanets with rings. 3D rendered background. Elements of this image were furnished by NASA.

The Search for Extraterrestrial Life 14

According to a new study from the University of Copenhagen, 4.5 billion years ago, there was enough water on Mars to cover the planet in an ocean 300 metres deep

Our universe: A recent buzz is the magnificent new map of the universe from Johns Hopkins University, giving some sense of our universe’s nearly unfathomable size. Astronomer Hugh Ross points out at Reasons to Believe that the universe also seems to be designed for observability: Sound implausible? Well, here’s what he says: “ … there’s a relatively narrow time window in the history of the universe during which astronomers can observe 100% of the universe’s past history. Humans are inside that time window now. I also demonstrated that we are living in the one location within this vast universe where intelligent physical life is possible, and where that intelligent life can observe 100% of the past history of the universe. Read More ›

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Graphic abstract butterfly escapes opening heart background

Orville: Isaac Gets To Be a Real Boy … for 30 seconds

Should he be given the opportunity to feel the painful emotions associated with his tragic circumstances? It's a dilemma that Dr. Finn does not seem to recognize

This episode was nowhere near as abysmal as Episode Six. Granted not much happened, but it does offer one interesting idea. There are three main stories going on at the same time, and two of them intersect. First, the Orville is attempting to make peace with a race of aliens called the Janisi, who are a matriarchal society. In order to open negotiations with the Janisi, the crew decides to gender swap the staff on the ship. This is played for laughs, as a kind of a gotcha to all men, but for me, none of the jokes really landed. The bits are mostly just Seth MacFarlane stumbling around while carrying a bunch of suitcases for this alien race. It’s Read More ›

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Icon group as speech bubble cloud

Update: Musk’s Second Salvo: Twitter Did Secretly Censor Users

Despite execs claiming that it didn’t. Elon Musk gave journalist Bari Weiss the story

Readers may recall that Elon Musk, having bought Twitter, started opening some windows. It came out that the Hunter Biden laptop story was suppressed for reasons that would never have passed muster with a story about any other political figure. There is good reason to believe that Twitter had a cozy relationship with the FBI in the matter. Now, it turns out that, contrary to denials by top execs, there were indeed secret blacklists at Twitter: Twitter kept a ‘secret blacklist’ of topics and accounts to prevent them from trending, according to data obtained by journalist Bari Weiss – with conservative commentators deliberately downplayed in what one called ‘Soviet-style bulls***’,’ while another said he was treated ‘with more censorship than Read More ›

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Programming code script abstract screen of software developer.

Computers Are Not Persons Because Computing Is Not Thinking

Walter Bradley Center director Robert J. Marks discusses the issues with human dignity advocate Wesley J. Smith

Recently, Walter Bradley Center director Robert J. Marks interviewed human dignity advocate Wesley J. Smith on the seeming science fiction question of “Can a computer be a person?” (November 10, 2022, podcast 212): https://mindmatters.ai/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/11/Mind-Matters-212-Robert-Marks.mp3 Here are a couple of highlights: About Alexa: Wesley J. Smith: I was going to ask you about Alexa because she may come on in behind me. Of course, she’s not a she. That’s just a female-sounding voice. But I can ask, we’ll call her A, so she doesn’t come on, what time it is and she’ll tell me immediately. I can tell her to play certain music and she’ll play it immediately. How does that operate? I mean, she’s not… That program is not intelligent, Read More ›