Mind Matters Natural and Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis

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girl-before-a-doors-stockpack-adobe-stock
Girl before a doors
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post
Author
News
Date
July 12, 2022
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Ethics, Law, Philosophy of Mind
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Michael Egnor: If Evil Exists, So Must Good — and Real Choices!

In the podcast, he explains, denial of free will doesn’t mean that there is no guilt but rather that there is no innocence
News
July 12, 2022
9
Ethics, Law, Philosophy of Mind

In a podcast aired July 8, 2022, geoscientist Casey Luskin and neurosurgeon Michael Egnor explore “Evolution and the disturbing consequences of denying free will.” One consequence they look at is pre-crime, that is, treating people who are thought likely to commit an offence as if they had already done so. A partial transcript and notes follows. The podcast is here. Casey Luskin: In the previous podcast, Dr. Egnor, you mentioned how, once somebody denies free will, they really lose the ability to condemn any action that a human takes as morally evil. Everything we did in their view is determined by the forces of nature, and really nobody ought to be at fault for having done anything. These arguments have, Read More ›

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3D render beautiful woman computer generated photo realistic to to illustrate the uncanny valley effect
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post
Author
Robert J. Marks
Date
July 12, 2022
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Artificial Intelligence, Arts & Culture, Psychology, Robotics
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AI: The Shadow of Frankenstein Lurks in the Uncanny Valley

The fifth and final excerpt from Non-Computable You (2022), from Chapter 6, focuses on the scarier AI hype
Robert J. Marks
July 12, 2022
8
Artificial Intelligence, Arts & Culture, Psychology, Robotics

Wrapping AI in an impressive physical package can magnify the perceived impact of new technology. Doing so uses seductive optics. The confusing of AI packaging with AI content was evident in media excitement about a Buddhist robot who delivers messages to the faithful. “The world’s first sutra-chanting android deity, modeled after Kannon the Buddhist Goddess of Mercy, was introduced to the public last week,” the report reads. The robot can “move its eyes, hands, and torso, make human-like gestures during its speech, and brings its hands together in prayer. A camera implanted in the left eye to focus on a subject gives the impression of eye contact.”1 Technologically speaking, nothing special is happening here. The messages from the Buddhist robot Read More ›

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Young woman having knee pain
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post
Author
News
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July 11, 2022
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Medicine and Health, Neuroscience, Philosophy of Mind
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Study: Brain Scans Show That Mindfulness Reduces Acute Pain

The volunteers who meditated during a controlled pain experiment reported a 32% reduction in severity
News
July 11, 2022
5
Medicine and Health, Neuroscience, Philosophy of Mind

Recently, neuroscientists at the University of California – San Diego studied whether mindfulness meditation can reduce the perception of pain. That, of course, meant actually causing the volunteers to experience pain. What’s at stake is a central claim of mindfulness meditation: “One of the central tenets of mindfulness is the principle that you are not your experiences,” said senior author Fadel Zeidan, PhD, associate professor of anesthesiology at UC San Diego School of Medicine. “You train yourself to experience thoughts and sensations without attaching your ego or sense of self to them, and we’re now finally seeing how this plays out in the brain during the experience of acute pain.” University of California – San Diego, “Mindfulness meditation reduces pain Read More ›

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outpost
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News
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July 11, 2022
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Computer Security, Global Technology, Language
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Three Simple Words Can Find Any Place on Earth

The “what3words system” of geolocation is easier to remember than many street addresses and may also work for passwords
News
July 11, 2022
5
Computer Security, Global Technology, Language

What3words is an app and web-based service that can convert practically any location within 3 × 3 meters (or 10 × 10 feet) — the size of a typical small bedroom or den — to just three short English words if you can give it an address. Don’t believe that? Try it. The address of the Library of Congress is person.hotels.canny The address of the Louvre Museum in France is started.pelting.pops And … bluffs.alas.skater? That’s the address of a Canadian Tire store somewhere in Ottawa. Clicking Bing Maps at the What3Words site will give you that store’s street address, satellite image and tell you how to get there. So why do this? Math prof Mary Lynn Reed explains: This new Read More ›

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Big eye watching a group of people 3D rendering
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post
Author
Gary Smith
Date
July 11, 2022
Categorized
Artificial Intelligence, Business and Finance, Economics
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AI Would Run the World Better Than Humans, Google Research Claims

Don’t believe the headlines: Google’s inhouse game does not show that AI is ready to rule the world
Gary Smith
July 11, 2022
5
Artificial Intelligence, Business and Finance, Economics

Sixty years ago, conservative provocateur William F. Buckley wrote, “I would rather be governed by the first 2,000 people in the telephone directory, than by the Harvard University faculty.” Buckley was a Yale man, but his barb was not intended to compare Harvard to Yale. He later explained: Not, heaven knows, because I hold lightly the brainpower or knowledge or generosity or even the affability of the Harvard faculty: but because I greatly fear intellectual arrogance, and that is a distinguishing characteristic of the university which refuses to accept any common premise. Now may be the time to update Buckley’s incendiary remarks: I would rather be governed by the first 2,000 people in the telephone directory, than by a black Read More ›

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Terrariums
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post
Author
News
Date
July 10, 2022
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Philosophy, Physics, Science Fiction
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Dartmouth Physicist Slams Matrix Idea That Life Is an Aliens’ Sim

A number of prominent people have taken philosopher Nick Bostrom’s idea that our universe is a computer sim seriously
News
July 10, 2022
5
Philosophy, Physics, Science Fiction

Matrix fans, take heed: Dartmouth College physicist Marcelo Gleiser is not a fan of the idea that we are all living in a giant simulation created by intelligent aliens. He takes issue with it for ethical reasons as well as physics ones: “It is little more than a fancy excuse for escapist fantasizing.” Well, some prominent people in our world are escapists! That would include science broadcaster Neil deGrasse Tyson, driverless car entrepreneur Elon Musk, and former Astronomer Royal Martin Rees. Gleiser, author of The Island of Knowledge (2014), traces the idea that our universe is a computer simulation by advanced aliens to an influential 2003 paper by Oxford philosopher Nick Bostrom, director of the Future of Humanity Institute and Read More ›

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Website designer working digital tablet and computer laptop with
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post
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News
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July 10, 2022
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Information Theory
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Is Information Physical? It Depends On What You Mean by Physical…

Information makes things happen but, curiously, it erases its own history
News
July 10, 2022
9
Information Theory

University of Pittsburgh physics prof David Snoke has thought a lot about the relationship between information and physical reality. For example, why does a zip drive full of critical information — that will cause many changes when people read it — weigh only as much as an empty one? Here’s an excerpt from a lecture he gave (podcast) in 2015 on whether information is physical. Although the talk was intended for a group of scientists, it is lay-friendly and enjoyable: People say, “Well, information is not a real thing,” or “It’s only between humans” or something like that. That’s not the way physicists typically talk. So I want to connect you to some of the work that’s been done over Read More ›

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Abstract digital human face. Artificial intelligence concept of big data or cyber security. 3D illustration
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post
Author
Robert J. Marks
Date
July 10, 2022
Categorized
Artificial Intelligence, Religion
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Artificial Intelligence, Worshipped as God, Is No Ordinary Deity!

Not only will we be reborn into new, immortal silicon bodies but rules regarding theft don’t seem to apply anymore…
Robert J. Marks
July 10, 2022
5
Artificial Intelligence, Religion

This article was published in The Stream (July 6, 2022) under the title “The Church of Artificial Intelligence of the Future” and is republished with permission. There is a church that worships artificial intelligence (AI). Zealots believe that an extraordinary AI future is inevitable. The technology is not here yet, but we are assured that it’s coming. We will have the ability to be uploaded onto a computer and thereby achieve immortality. You will be reborn into a new, immortal silicon body. Of course, through salvation in Jesus Christ, Christianity has offered a path to immortality for over two thousand years. Someday, we are told, software will write better and better AI software to ultimately achieve a superintelligence. The superintelligence Read More ›

Close up of a Chimpanzee-family (mother and her two kids)
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post
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News
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July 9, 2022
Categorized
Natural Intelligence, Science Fiction
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Retro Future: In a 1960s Take on the 2020s, Chimps Do Our Chores

And drive cars. The Rand Corporation actually put out a video promoting the idea…
News
July 9, 2022
4
Natural Intelligence, Science Fiction

Our “past future” — that is, what people fifty or sixty years ago thought life would be like today — can be instructive and sobering. In 1964, the Rand Corporation put out the idea that by 2020, chimpanzees would be doing household tasks and (safely) driving cars. (The chimps are from 40 seconds to 110 seconds.) The idea that chimpanzees are just furry people must have been well entrenched in those days. It was during the same time period that some prominent scientists, including Frank Drake and Carl Sagan (1934–1996), were actively researching the idea of communicating intelligently with dolphins as well. But the sad reality is that efforts to integrate chimpanzees (and dolphins) into the human world have often Read More ›

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multiverse conceptual illustration
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post
Author
Gary Varner
Date
July 9, 2022
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Arts & Culture, Science Fiction
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Dr. Strange’s Multiverse of Madness Features Infinite Problems

The extensive edits to Sam Rami’s work as a director have left it riddled with plot holes and inconsistencies
Gary Varner
July 9, 2022
10
Arts & Culture, Science Fiction

In my review last week, I ranted about the multiverse as a concept in storytelling, and how the Mouse has used it an excuse to turn Wanda Maximoff into a sorry shadow of her former self. If I could describe the problems overall with the movie in one word, that word would be laziness. The multiverse is used as an excuse for all kinds of incoherent nonsense. Before going into detail, it is important to note that Multiverse of Madness (2022) went through massive reshoots before its release. Film aficionados have said that, while there are hints of Sam Rami’s directing style, they were very few in number and it is evident that the edits to the film were extensive. Read More ›

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Twitter handle with care
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post
Author
Denyse O'Leary
Date
July 9, 2022
Categorized
Business and Finance, Censorship, Social Media
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Elon Musk Has Walked Out on Twitter … Or Has He?

Some think it’s all theater. Others that he is compelling a price reduction “by other means”
Denyse O'Leary
July 9, 2022
4
Business and Finance, Censorship, Social Media

Yesterday, Elon Musk announced that he was backing out of the deal to buy Twitter, which he was hoping to turn into more of a free speech platform: Elon Musk, the chief executive officer of Tesla (TSLA.O) and the world’s richest person, said on Friday he was terminating his $44 billion deal to buy Twitter (TWTR.N) because the social media company had breached multiple provisions of the merger agreement. Greg Roumeliotis, “Twitter vows legal fight after Musk pulls out of $44 billion deal” at Reuters (July 9, 2022) Twitter plans to fight: The Twitter Board is committed to closing the transaction on the price and terms agreed upon with Mr. Musk and plans to pursue legal action to enforce the Read More ›

Young businesswoman thinking while using a laptop at work
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post
Author
News
Date
July 8, 2022
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Artificial Intelligence, Philosophy of Mind
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Marks: Computers Only Compute and Thinking Needs More Than That

Robert J. Marks talks about his new book, Non-Computable You, with Oregon-based talk show host Bill Meyer
News
July 8, 2022
13
Artificial Intelligence, Philosophy of Mind

Recently, Bill Meyer interviewed Walter Bradley Center director Robert J. Marks on his Oregon-based talk show about “Why computers will never understand what they are doing,” in connection with his new book, Non-Computable You: What You Do That Artificial Intelligence Never Will (Discovery Institute Press, 2022). We are rebroadcasting it with permission here as (Episode 194). Meyer began by saying, “I started reading a book over the weekend that I am going to continue to eagerly devour because it cut against some of my preconceived notions”: https://mindmatters.ai/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/07/Mind-Matters-194-Bob-Marks-Bill-Meyer.mp3 A partial transcript, notes,  and Additional Resources follow. Meyer and Marks began by discussion the recent flap at Google where software engineer Blake Lemoine claimed that the AI he was working with was Read More ›

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Artificial Intelligence self aware android robots patrolling a destroyed city. 3d rendering
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post
Author
News
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July 8, 2022
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Artificial Intelligence, Creativity
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Study: AI Will Make Human Factors More, Not Less, Critical in War

Counterintuitive? Not when we factor in the “fog of war” that makes military situations more confusing than, say, conventional business ones
News
July 8, 2022
4
Artificial Intelligence, Creativity

We sometimes hear that artificial intelligence in the military means that AI takes the risks and does the fighting while humans direct from a safe distance. It sounds reassuring but it’s not likely, say Georgia Institute of Technology cybersecurity professor Jon Lindsay and University of Toronto AI professor Avi Goldfarb: Many policy makers assume human soldiers could be replaced with automated systems, ideally making militaries less dependent on human labor and more effective on the battlefield. This is called the substitution theory of AI, but Lindsay and Goldfarb state that AI should not be seen as a substitute, but rather a complement to existing human strategy. “Machines are good at prediction, but they depend on data and judgment, and the Read More ›

An abstract computer generated fractal design. A fractal is a never-ending pattern. Fractals are infinitely complex patterns that are self-similar across different scales.
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post
Author
Robert J. Marks
Date
July 8, 2022
Categorized
Mathematics
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Some Infinities Are Bigger Than Others But There’s No Biggest One

Georg Cantor came up with an ingenious proof that infinities can differ in size even though both remain infinite
Robert J. Marks
July 8, 2022
7
Mathematics

When a child is asked “what is bigger than infinity,” the response is often “Infinity plus one.” No. Infinity plus one is still infinity. But we can show that the number of points on the interval zero to one is a bigger infinity than the counting numbers are. The first clue is the fact that we can’t count the number of points on a line interval. Try labeling the points on a line as points 1, 2, 3, etc. No matter what scheme you come up with, there will always be some points on the line segment that are not included in your count. Georg Cantor (1845–1918) came up with an ingenious argument to show that the infinite number of Read More ›

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books
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Author
News
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July 7, 2022
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Economics, Education, Ethics
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Brain for Hire: The Internet Makes Academic Cheating Much Easier

Dave Tomar, who wrote essays for students for hire for a decade, then wrote a book about it, thinks 40% of students cheat at least once
News
July 7, 2022
5
Economics, Education, Ethics

For many years, Dave Tomar was that bane that universities always claim to be doing something about but can’t (or anyway never) do — an essay writer for hire. Wait. Wasn’t the internet supposed to end cheating? The search engine reveals all, right?… No. Read on. In The Complete Guide to Contract Cheating in Higher Education (Academic Influence, 2022), Tomar, long a freelance writer and now a plagiarism expert, explains: Yes, that happened when Google became the default search engine in 2000 and the usual copy-paste and essay mill methods no longer worked. But… Cheaters and their enablers would just need to get more creative. If, before, there were just online repositories of essays and the people who curated them, Read More ›

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Concept of robots replacing humans in offices
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post
Author
News
Date
July 7, 2022
Categorized
Artificial Intelligence, Work
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Marks: Forget the Hype, “Thinking Machines” Can’t Replace Humans

It’s easy to picture, especially if we don’t know much about computers. And fears are easily exploited. But what are the facts?
News
July 7, 2022
3
Artificial Intelligence, Work

Walter Bradley Center director Robert J. Marks gave a talk in January at the Dallas Conference on Science and Faith on whether a robot will really take your job: “AI Apocalypse: Will Thinking Machines Replace Humans?” Just released on video: As a computer engineer, Marks looks at the pop culture worry a bit differently from some. His skeptical response has also been captured in a just-published book, Non-Computable You: What You Do That Artificial Intelligence Never Will (Discovery Institute Press, 2022). The book makes clear that computers compute. They don’t really do anything that cannot be expressed as a computation. That’s both a strength and a weakness. The ability of an algorithm to sort through billions of online documents in Read More ›

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World twitter Connection on Blackboard
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post
Author
Denyse O'Leary
Date
July 7, 2022
Categorized
Censorship, Social Media
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Twitter Now Suing India’s Government Over Its Censorship Demands

Meanwhile, on July 4, new owner-to-be Elon Musk tweets a jab at Twitter’s own censors: the British government “fact checks” Paul Revere
Denyse O'Leary
July 7, 2022
4
Censorship, Social Media

Twitter, never out of the news for long these days, is suing the government of India over censorship issues: On Tuesday, the U.S. social media platform asked an Indian court to overturn some of the government orders to kill posts, which Delhi had accused of spreading misinformation. They included posts that backed farmer protests and tweets critical of the government’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. Twitter called the crackdown overbroad and arbitrary, with the government demonstrating an “excessive use of powers”. Rina Chandran, “Twitter battles India for control of social media content” at Thomson Reuters Foundation News (July 6, 2022) No date is yet set for the hearing. Observers might be surprised by Twitter’s anti-censorship stance here, given the history Read More ›

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baby chimpanzee ape at the zoo.
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post
Author
News
Date
July 6, 2022
Categorized
Language, Neuroscience
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Human Brain Has Many More Language Connections Than Chimp Brain

That finding isn’t surprising in principle but the researchers pinned down specific areas of greater connectivity
News
July 6, 2022
3
Language, Neuroscience

In a study of brain scans from 50 humans and 29 chimpanzees, researchers discovered an interesting difference: The connections between language areas in the human brain are much larger than previously thought and quite different from those of the chimpanzee brain. That’s, of course, consistent with the relative complexity of human thought and language but the question had not really been examined before with a focus on one specific area. The researchers were interested in a nerve tract that connects the frontal and temporal lobes of the brain, the arcuate fasciculus. Chimpanzee brain connectivity seems to involve mainly the temporal lobe but in humans there is a connection towards the frontal and parietal lobes via the arcuate fasciculus. “Our findings Read More ›

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Several cards
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post
Author
News
Date
July 6, 2022
Categorized
Probability
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The Holy Rollers: Christians Who Gamble for God

Not only have many successful players been Christians, probability theory was developed in part by a philosopher who became a devout Christian
News
July 6, 2022
14
Probability

This last instalment of the writeup of the podcasts with mathematician, computer scientist, engineer — and part-time gambler — Salvador Cordova looks at why and how Christians like himself gamble without cheating. Cordova was one of the crowdfunders of a film on the topic called Holy Rollers (2011). The host is fellow engineer and Walter Bradley Center director Robert J. Marks in “Card Counting Strategies and Dangers” (podcast, June 23, 2022): https://mindmatters.ai/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/06/Mind-Matters-News-Episode-192-Sal-Cordova-Episode-4-rev1.mp3 This portion begins at 15:47 min. A partial transcript and notes, Show Notes, and Additional Resources follow. Robert J. Marks: First of all, tell us what the movie was about, and then your involvement. Sal Cordova: It’s about one of the most successful card counting teams, blackjack teams. Read More ›

policewoman-holding-arrested-young-woman-while-her-partner-talking-on-portable-radio-stockpack-adobe-stock
policewoman holding arrested young woman while her partner talking on portable radio
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post
Author
Gary Smith
Date
July 6, 2022
Categorized
Artificial Intelligence, Crime, Probability
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Can AI Really Predict Crime a Week in Advance? That’s the Claim.

University of Chicago data scientists claim 90% accuracy for their algorithm using past data — but it’s hard to evaluate
Gary Smith
July 6, 2022
5
Artificial Intelligence, Crime, Probability

The University of Chicago recently announced to great fanfare that, Data and social scientists from the University of Chicago have developed a new algorithm that forecasts crime by learning patterns in time and geographic locations from public data on violent and property crimes. The model can predict future crimes one week in advance with about 90% accuracy. University of Chicago Medical Center, “Algorithm Predicts Crime a Week in Advance, but Reveals Bias in Police Response” at Newswise (June 28, 2022) Many thought immediately of the 2002 movie Minority Report, in which three psychics (“precogs”) visualize murders before they occur, thereby allowing special PreCrime police to arrest would-be assailants before they can commit them. Have these University of Chicago researchers made Read More ›