Eric Holloway

AI, Machine learning, Hands of robot and human touching on big data network connection background, Science and artificial intelligence technology, innovation and futuristic.

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Author
Eric Holloway
Date
February 20, 2022

Categorized
Artificial Intelligence, Philosophy of Mind

Tagged
Artificial intelligence (implications of consciousness), Daniel Dennett (on conscious AI), Featured, GPT-2, Ilya Sutskever, Linguistic neural networks, Mathematics (consciousness), Uncanny Valley effect}

“Slightly” Conscious Computers Could Doom Atheism

_{That might sound surprising but let’s follow the logic of the “consciousness” claim through to its inevitable conclusion} _{Eric Holloway

February 20, 2022

4

Artificial Intelligence, Philosophy of Mind}

Recently, Ilya Sutskever, co-founder of OpenAI, proposed that artificial intelligence (AI) may currently be “slightly” conscious. His claim was probably in reference to the GPT-3 AI that can generate text from a prompt. I’ve played with a couple of the linguistic neural networks a bit, and you can try them out here. Some of the output is quirky, which could be mistaken for personality and make the algorithm appear conscious. The algorithm also generates emotional statements, that can generate empathy in a human user of the system. Just as kids make believe their dolls are alive when they develop an emotional bond with their toy, the algorithm text generates empathy in the human user. It can make us feel a Read More ›

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Author
Eric Holloway
Date
January 23, 2022

Categorized
Artificial Intelligence, Philosophy of Mind

Tagged
Conscious Mind (book), David Chalmers (on computer consciousness), Emperor's New Mind (book), Gödel's Second Incompleteness Theorem, Non-computable concepts, Roger Penrose, Roger Penrose (on computer consciousness)}

Chalmers and Penrose Clash Over “Conscious Computers”

_{Philosopher Chalmers thinks computers could be conscious but physicist Penrose says no} _{Eric Holloway

January 23, 2022

4

Artificial Intelligence, Philosophy of Mind}

Two authors I’ve been reading recently are Roger Penrose and David Chalmers. Penrose is a physics Nobel laureate who has stoked controversy by claiming in The Emperor’s New Mind: Concerning Computers, Minds and The Laws of Physics (1989) that the mind can do things beyond the ability of computers. Chalmers is a philosopher of science who claims in The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory (1997) that consciousness cannot be reduced to physical processes. Both thinkers are well respected in their fields, even though they articulate positions that imply that the mind’s operation is beyond current science. At the same time, they believe that there is a way to see the mind as part of nature (that is, Read More ›

3d rendering of Human cell or Embryonic stem cell microscope background.

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Author
Eric Holloway
Date
December 27, 2021

Categorized
Artificial Intelligence, Ethics, Philosophy of Mind, Science

Tagged
Artificial intelligence (powered by human brain cells), Brain organoids (playing Pong), Consciousness (brain organoids), Cortical Labs, Featured, Free energy principle (FEP), Human embryonic stem cells, Human embryonic stem cells (and consciousness), Human-induced pluripotent stem cells, Organoids (brain organoids), Organoids powering appliances (ethics), Pong (video game)}

Are the Brain Cells in a Dish That Learned Pong Conscious?

_{Human-derived organoids learned faster than AI and always outperformed mouse-derived organoids in terms of volley length, raising troubling questions} _{Eric Holloway

December 27, 2021

5

Artificial Intelligence, Ethics, Philosophy of Mind, Science}

Recently, science media were abuzz with a remarkable story about minibrains (mouse and human brain cells in a dish) learning to play the video game Pong: Scientists have successfully taught a collection of human brain cells in a petri dish how to play the video game “Pong” — kind of. Researchers at the biotechnology startup Cortical Labs have created “mini-brains“ consisting of 800,000 to one million living human brain cells in a petri dish, New Scientist reports. The cells are placed on top of a microelectrode array that analyzes the neural activity. “We think it’s fair to call them cyborg brains,” Brett Kagan, chief scientific officer at Cortical Labs and research lead of the project, told New Scientist. Tony Tran, Read More ›

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Author
Eric Holloway
Date
December 1, 2021

Categorized
Artificial Intelligence, Biology

Tagged
Douglas Blackiston et al., Featured, Self-replication (frog stem cell claims), Self-replication (information problem), Von Neumann Universal Constructor, Xenobots (frog stem cells)}

Is the Age of the Living, Self-Replicating Robot at Hand? No.

_{Stem cells naturally reproduce themselves. The researchers working with frog stem cells merely found, via algorithms, one configuration that works better} _{Eric Holloway

December 1, 2021

4

Artificial Intelligence, Biology}

Recently, the sci-fi dream of self-replicating robots has been in the news, thanks to the University of Vermont, Tufts University, and the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard. A recent experiment with frog cells was hailed by news outlets as disparate as CNN (“World’s first living robots can now reproduce, scientists say”) and Daily Wire (“American Universities Create First ‘Self-Replicating Living Robots’”). And it was also debunked by Ars Technica: (“Interesting research, but no, we don’t have living, reproducing robots”). So what’s really happening? Self-replication is a very tricky problem of information. To truly self-replicate, an organism must completely copy the information necessary for function. Seems simple enough but it introduces a conundrum. For the organism to copy Read More ›

Billiard balls colorful background, 3D rendering

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Author
Eric Holloway
Date
November 19, 2021

Categorized
Philosophy, Science

Tagged
Atoms (views of atoms), Epicureanism, Epicurus, Featured, Lucretius, Materialism, On the Nature of Things (poem), Physicalism, Physics (and Epicureanism)}

Can the “Physical World” Be Wholly Physical? Physical at All?

_{Nothing ever physically touches anything else in the physical world, yet the effects of objects on each other are a constant occurrence} _{Eric Holloway

November 19, 2021

3

Philosophy, Science}

Sounds like the answer should be “Of course!” But the question may not be as simple as it appears. Let’s wind the clock back to the first century BC, when a Roman poet and philosopher named Lucretius wrote the poem On the Nature of Things.” In this poem, Lucretius outlines a philosophy known as Epicureanism in order to demonstrate the world can be explained without reference to a deity. In the Epicurean philosophy, only three things exist: atoms, the void, and the universe. Consequently, everything we see in the physical world can be reduced to atoms bumping into each other. You may notice that Epicurean philosophy sounds similar to modern day physics. This is not an accident. Through the influence Read More ›

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Author
Eric Holloway
Date
October 12, 2021

Categorized
Artificial Intelligence, Relationships

Tagged
Featured, GPT-3 (and human language learning), GPT-3 (scale question), Language learning, Reborn dolls}

Is GPT-3 the “Reborn Doll” of Artificial Intelligence?

_{Unlike the reality doll collectors, GPT-3 engineers truly believe that scaling up the model size will suddenly cause GPT-3 to think and talk like a real human} _{Eric Holloway

October 12, 2021

5

Artificial Intelligence, Relationships}

There is a worldwide community that collects “reborn dolls.” These dolls look almost like real babies. Look again, closely, at the featured photo above… They help some collectors cope with the loss of a child. For others, it fulfills their sense of self image. And yet others just see them as a quirky hobby. Regardless of how much the baby dolls mimic the appearance of real dolls, the dolls will forever remain copies because the external appearances are not generated by biological processes. For the collectors, this is a feature, not a bug. They enjoy the appearance of a baby without the real life difficulties of raising a real person. As one collector comments, her doll “doesn’t turn into a Read More ›

Human brain digital illustration. Electrical activity, flashes and lightning on a blue background.

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Author
Eric Holloway
Date
October 4, 2021

Categorized
Natural Intelligence, Philosophy of Mind

Tagged
Intractable Cognition Thesis, NP-Complete domain, Occam's razor, polynomial time algorithm, Tractable Cognition Thesis}

An Alternative to the Tractable Cognition Thesis

_{The Tractable Cognition Thesis presents us with a gap in the logic when it comes to NP-Complete problems. How can we solve for it?} _{Eric Holloway

October 4, 2021

4

Natural Intelligence, Philosophy of Mind}

The Tractable Cognition Thesis is the proposal that all processes in the brain can be modeled by a polynomial time algorithm. This includes situations where the brain solves problems that are within NP-Complete domains. In the latter situation, it is assumed the brain is only solving a subset of the NP-Complete domain where the problems can be solved with a polynomial time algorithm. With these assumptions in place, the overall implication is that there is a specific polynomial time algorithm that can emulate every process in the brain. However, there is a gap in the logic when it comes to NP-Complete problems. It is well known that humans solve many problems that are in the general case NP-Complete. Route planning, Read More ›

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Author
Eric Holloway
Date
September 27, 2021

Categorized
Artificial Intelligence

Tagged
Artificial Intelligence, Eric Holloway, Killer robots, Lovelace test, Rice's theorem, Terminator, Terminator test, Turing Machine, Turing Test}

Move Over Turing and Lovelace – We Need a Terminator Test

_{More research should be spent on a Terminator test to mitigate the threat of an unfriendly, all-powerful artificial intelligence} _{Eric Holloway

September 27, 2021

4

Artificial Intelligence}

What we really need is not a Turing test or a Lovelace test, but a Terminator test. Just imagine. If we create an all-powerful artificial intelligence, we cannot assume it will be friendly. We cannot guarantee anything about the AI’s behavior due to something known as Rice’s theorem. Rice’s theorem states that all non-trivial semantic properties of programs are undecidable. Benevolence is certainly a non-trivial semantic property of programs, which means we cannot guarantee benevolent AIs. Therefore, what we really need is a way to distinguish the all-powerful artificial intelligence from human intelligence, so we can protect ourselves from humanized mass murdering robots. Let us think about this in terms of test errors. When we perform a test on some Read More ›

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Author
Eric Holloway
Date
August 31, 2021

Categorized
Science

Tagged
Randomness}

Why Is Randomness A Good Model, But Not A Good Explanation?

_{After all, random processes are used all the time to model things in science} _{Eric Holloway

August 31, 2021

5

Science}

The previous article I wrote about randomness proved quite controversial. After all, random processes are used all the time to model things in science. How can I say randomness is not a scientific explanation? Let me first make a distinction between a model and an explanation. A model shows us how some physical thing operates, but it does not explain the cause of the thing. An explanation, on the other hand, tries to explain the cause. But surely if we can effectively model something with randomness, then randomness must also be part of the causal explanation for the thing? Well, not so fast. Let’s look at how we model randomness with computers. Computers themselves are not random in the slightest. Read More ›

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Author
Eric Holloway
Date
August 9, 2021

Categorized
Science

Tagged
Andrey Kolmogorov, Gregory Chaitin, Origin of life, Randomness, Ray Solomonoff}

Randomness is Not a Scientific Explanation

_{We can never know if anything is truly random} _{Eric Holloway

August 9, 2021

2

Science}

It is common in the sciences to claim aspects of our universe are random: In evolution, mutations are random. In quantum physics, the wave collapse is random. In biology, much of the genome is random. In business theory, organizational ecologists state new ideas are random. There is a general idea that everything new has its origins in randomness. This is because within our current philosophy of science, the two fundamental causes in our universe boil down to randomness and necessity. Since necessity never creates anything new, then by process of elimination the source of newness must be randomness. Similar to how the ancient Greeks believed the universe originated from chaos. Here’s the irony of the view that whatever is unique Read More ›

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Author
Eric Holloway
Date
July 26, 2021

Categorized
Philosophy, Science

Tagged
G. K. Chesterton, immortality, Materialism, Technology}

Our Scientific Salvation Will Be The Death Of Us

_{Will we trust "the science" (meaning the scientists) to the point of madness?} _{Eric Holloway

July 26, 2021

4

Philosophy, Science}

Originally published at Patheos “The truly insane man is the perfectly rational man.” So says G.K. Chesterton. This saying is very counter intuitive today. The perfectly rational man is the ideal scientist, the man who knows reality in precise quantitative terms, the best kind of knowledge we have. Such scientific knowledge promises the secret of immortality. If we can understand the fundamentals of our physical existence, we can shape our existence in whatever way we wish. The rational man is the messiah of our scientific age. So, why did Chesterton warn us about the rational man? The problem is that rationality only deals with the known knowns and the known unknowns. Rationality does not deal with the unknown unknowns. The Read More ›

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Author
Eric Holloway
Date
July 2, 2021

Categorized
Medicine and Health, Science

Tagged
Adam Shapiro, Anthony Fauci, Coronavirus, COVID-19 lab leak hypothesis, design inference, Explanatory Filter, Kristian Andersen, Michael Behe, SARS-CoV-2, William Dembski}

COVID-19’s Origins: Uses and Misuses of the Explanatory Filter

_{How a critic of intelligent design theory misunderstands the application of design inference} _{Eric Holloway

July 2, 2021

8

Medicine and Health, Science}

Last year in July a prominent critic of intelligent design theory, Dr. Adam Shapiro, took the Discovery Institute to task for not debunking the lab origin theory. He says, Behe seems to miss an opportunity to demonstrate that intelligent design theory shows how those pathways are not irreducible complex. Adam Shapiro, “Did Intelligent Design Just Miss Its Corona Moment?” at American Scientist and, How better to demonstrate its own apolitical nature than to apply its scientific process to debunk the Chinese lab myth? Adam Shapiro, “Did Intelligent Design Just Miss Its Corona Moment?” at American Scientist First of all, this is a fundamental misunderstanding of ID. ID theory is only resilient against false positives, not false negatives, as Dr. Ewert Read More ›

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Author
Eric Holloway
Date
May 19, 2021

Categorized
Artificial Intelligence, Law, Philosophy of Mind

Tagged
Debating, Noam Slonim, Project Debater}

Can a New AI Debating Program Win All the Debates?

_{While billed as an autonomous debating system, Project Debater features very little autonomy} _{Eric Holloway

May 19, 2021

5

Artificial Intelligence, Law, Philosophy of Mind}

From ancient days, reason has been considered the hallmark of what sets humans apart from animals. Aristotle defined humans as the rational animal and this definition has stuck through the history of Western philosophy. Human reason is best demonstrated in debate. Thus, if we can create programs that argue a point effectively, then computers will have conquered an important frontier of what it means to be intelligent. Recently, we learned at Nature that one research team claims to have developed such a program: A fully autonomous computer system has been developed that can take part in live debates with people. The findings hint at a future in which artificial intelligence can help humans to formulate and make sense of complex Read More ›

Stock market data on digital LED display. Fundamental and technical analysis with candle stick graph chart of stock market trading to represent about Bullish and Bearish point.

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Author
Eric Holloway
Date
May 17, 2021

Categorized
Business and Finance, Creativity

Tagged
Businesses (as if life forms), Creativity, Darwinian evolution theory, entrepreneurship, Evolution theory, John Freeman, Michael Hannan, Organizational ecology, Organizational Ecology (book), Peter Thiel, Zero to One (book)}

Can Darwinian Theory Explain the Rise and Fall of Businesses?

_{The fashionable field of organizational ecology says yes — organizations are like animals in nature} _{Eric Holloway

May 17, 2021

3

Business and Finance, Creativity}

When you think of “business,” do you think of stuffy suits and boring meetings? But maybe that’s just a pose. Organizational science studies what makes businesses survive, thrive and die. The description makes businesses sound more like living, vulnerable animals, doesn’t it? There is even a widely accepted subfield called organizational ecology, founded by Michael Hannan and John Freeman (1944–2008), which applies evolution theory to businesses. In 1989, Harvard University Press published their very influential book on the topic. Organizational ecology applies a specifically Darwinian form of evolution theory to businesses. That is, the main driving force of change for businesses is seen as natural selection. The “ecology” part of organizational ecology is the idea that the ever-changing business environment Read More ›

Futuristic heads up display blue green abstract interface

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Author
Eric Holloway
Date
April 26, 2021

Categorized
Philosophy, Science

Tagged
Benford's Law, Carl Sagan, Chance, Conspiracy theories, design in nature, design inference, Detachability (and design inference), Explanatory Filter, Intelligent design theory, Necessity, Probability, Voter fraud allegations (in U.S.), William Dembski}

How the Explanatory Filter Can Help Quash Conspiracy Theories

_{I found Dembski’s explanatory filter quite helpful in investigating voter fraud claims} _{Eric Holloway

April 26, 2021

10

Philosophy, Science}

William Dembski’s explanatory filter is a decision strategy for identifying events that are unlikely to have happened purely by chance. The filter proceeds in three main steps, which can be illustrated via the plot device in Contact, a novel (1985) by Carl Sagan, followed by a film (1997): Eliminate events of large probability (necessity): A radio telescope receives a pattern of beeps and pauses. Perhaps the pattern seems strange to us but we could just be overinterpreting inevitable space noise. Eliminate events of medium probability (chance): The pattern turns out to be a sequence of prime numbers. However, large randomly generated numbers sometimes feature apparent patterns (five 5s in a row, for example) that don’t signify anything. Specify the event Read More ›

Spiral aloe vera with water drops, closeup

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Author
Eric Holloway
Date
April 25, 2021

Categorized
Ethics, Philosophy of Mind, Religion, Surveillance

Tagged
Alger Hiss (book), Communism, design in nature, God (Whittaker Chambers's account), Terror, Whittaker Chambers, Witness (book)}

How Did One Man Gain the Strength to Turn Away From Nihilism?

_{Chambers was quite willing to accept that he had joined, essentially, a terrorist organization, so long as he could see it as for the greater good} _{Eric Holloway

April 25, 2021

5

Ethics, Philosophy of Mind, Religion, Surveillance}

American writer Whittaker Chambers (1901–1961) sparked McCarthyism (a witch hunt against suspected Communists at high levels in the U.S. government in the early 1950s), during the trial of State Department official Alger Hiss. Senator Joseph McCarthy began his eponymous crusade against communists largely because Chambers had exposed Hiss as a Communist spy. Chambers, a senior editor at Time Magazine, knew that Hiss was a spy because Chambers himself was a spy who worked closely with Hiss and was in fact a very close friend. Which begs the question, why would a spy turn in his closest friend, as well as imperil himself? To understand the question and provide an answer, Chambers wrote an account of his conversion experience, and the Read More ›

Anti social man, business connection or social network concept, miniature people businessman standing on colorful pastel chalk line link and connect between multiple dot or tiers on blackboard

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Author
Eric Holloway
Date
April 9, 2021

Categorized
Artificial Intelligence, Creativity, Philosophy of Mind

Tagged
Creative intelligence, Creative intelligence (cluttered attic analogy), Creative intelligence (connect the dots analogy), Creative intelligence (puzzle analogy), Creativity, Featured, Incompleteness theorems (Gödel), Kurt Gödel}

What Is the Essential Feature of Creative Intelligence?

_{Creative intelligence is easier to describe by what it is not than by what it is. But there is a clue in that very fact…} _{Eric Holloway

April 9, 2021

4

Artificial Intelligence, Creativity, Philosophy of Mind}

I’ve spent the past couple articles debunking artificial intelligence. It is just as artificial as its name suggests. It takes on the appearance of intelligence through speed but it lacks the fundamental ability to create a well-matched start and end. So a perceptive reader has returned with another good question: “What is creative intelligence?” The reader is right to ask. Yes, telling someone that the exquisite dessert is not celery and not cod liver oil does not help us understand what the dessert itself is. There is a mystery regarding the very nature of human intelligence. Like its antithesis, randomness, creative intelligence is easier to describe by what it is not than by what it is. But, we can try! Read More ›

technician standing in front of giant circuitboard, slight zoom effect

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Author
Eric Holloway
Date
March 23, 2021

Categorized
Artificial Intelligence, Programming

Tagged
Affirming the consequent (fallacy), ai-limits, Artificial intelligence (speed vs intelligence), Deep Blue, Featured, halting problem}

For Computers, Smart Is Not the Same Thing as Fast

_{In response to a reader’s good question …} _{Eric Holloway

March 23, 2021

6

Artificial Intelligence, Programming}

In a recent article, I argued that computers are not, and never can become smarter. An insightful reader wrote to ask, “What if smartness is defined by speed?” This is a good point. The debate revolves around the definition of “smart.” and if we define “smart” as “fast”, then since computers are certainly getting faster they will necessarily become smarter. Such a definition has intuitive appeal. Think of the world’s best chess player versus a beginner. One of the big distinctions is the chess expert will choose a good move more quickly than a beginner, and in general will play faster than a beginner. As such, play speed demonstrates a certain level of intelligence on the part of the player. Read More ›

The first model of the computational mechanism is an arithmometer.

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Author
Eric Holloway
Date
March 16, 2021

Categorized
Artificial Intelligence, Programming

Tagged
Featured, intelligence, Lovelace test, Superintelligent AI, Turing Machine}

Computers Are Getting Faster But Are They Getting Smarter? No.

_{Computers are Turing machines, limited to operations that can be completely understood in relation to their programming} _{Eric Holloway

March 16, 2021

3

Artificial Intelligence, Programming}

Won’t quantum computers be smarter than regular ones? No. Still No. What about optical computing, computing with DNA, or some other exotic form of computation? Always No. A skeptical reader might ask, Why such a definitive answer? How do you deal with the spectacular performance of deep learning? What about AlphaGo Zero? What about Watson? What about the infamous Deep Blue? What about quantum supremacy? Don’t these examples all disprove your point? No. All forms of computation past, present, and future will be physical. And all physical phenomena can be modeled by a Turing machine (pictured). No matter how fast the computer runs, the computer will never be more powerful than a Turing machine. A Turing machine consists of five Read More ›

Robotic man cyborg face representing artificial intelligence 3D rendering

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Author
Eric Holloway
Date
March 2, 2021

Categorized
Artificial Intelligence, Medicine and Health, Technocracy

Tagged
Evolution, Featured, free will, Mark Alan Walker, Person-engineered technologies, Ray Kurzweil, Second Law of Thermodynamics, Singularity}

Are We Facing the Next, Very Rapid Stage of Evolution, via AI?

_{Prof. Mark Alan Walker: “Person-engineering technologies will make it possible to accomplish in a matter of years what evolution would take thousands of millennia to achieve.”} _{Eric Holloway

March 2, 2021

6

Artificial Intelligence, Medicine and Health, Technocracy}

These are certainly heady times in the biotech world. With the new mRNA vaccine being created in just a few days in January 2020, someone can mass produce DNA in their garage for the price of a hamburger, and Alpha Fold 2 can predict proteins from DNA with accuracy, rivalling wet lab results, it seems we are on the cusp of something extraordinary. Most viral infections will cease if all we need to do to roll out a new vaccine is sequence the virus genome and mass produce the portion that binds to human cells. On the darker side, it will also likely mean a greater threat of biowarfare. Creating a new virus may just be a matter of downloading Read More ›