Mind Matters Natural and Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis
Photo courtesy of Peter Biles

Peter Biles

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Land with dry and cracked ground. Desert,Global warming background

A Canticle for Leibowitz, a Canticle of Speculative Warning

A 1959 novel's speculation of nuclear fallout is yet a story of hope.

This past year seems to have been the year of the atomic bomb, at least in what I’ve read and watched. I started 2023 by reading The Passenger and Stella Maris by Cormac McCarthy, a pair of novels that consistently alludes to Oppenheimer and the Manhattan Project. Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer arrived a few months later in July, sobering audiences worldwide and reinvigorating public interest in the godlike power these brilliant scientists had unleashed on the world. Most recently, I read the 1959 dystopian novel by Walter Miller, A Canticle for Leibowitz, a speculative tale about nuclear holocaust and the perennial human tendency for self-destruction. What a cheery year it’s been! Maybe I’ll switch things up and read Anne of Green Read More ›

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Corporate business people working in busy marketing office space, planning strategy in books and reading email on laptop at work. Businessman, businesswoman and workers at startup advertising company

Full-Time: Why We Need More Creative Productivity, Not Less

A new book shows how we lost the meaning of work and the ways we can get back on track.

Bahnsen subscribes to the classical view of economics that prizes production over consumption.

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Technology, chemistry and science banner design template. Molecule and communication pattern. Connected lines with dots.

Kurt Gödel’s “Incompleteness Theorem”

For Kurt Gödel, mathematics pointed to a remarkable world of transcendent order and meaning

Gödel saw the beauty of numbers and associated them with a transcendent order.

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Robot's hand holds up a red heart aigenerated.

Will You Be My Valentine, Chatbot?

It is a tragedy indeed when our loneliness as a culture has developed so far that many people see chatbot companions as one of the only way forward.

Recent studies indicate that members of Gen Z are dividing politically according to sex, with men leaning more conservative and women going more liberal.

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NFL Superbowl stadium at night.American football .

Taylor Swift and the Looming Threat of Deepfakes

According to an attorney, Swift should probably go after the AI companies themselves if she decides to sue.

The country-turned-pop star Taylor Swift has commanded headlines for well over a year now with her record-breaking “Eras Tour” as well as her romance with Kansas City Chiefs tight-end Travis Kelce. Unfortunately, her image has also made the rounds in AI engines. Deepfake pornography is already an emerging problem, but its seriousness resurfaced when explicit, AI-generated images of Taylor Swift went viral in late January. Only ten states currently have laws prohibiting deepfake pornography, but legislation is underway to ban it in several others, including Swift’s home state, Tennessee. According to attorney Carrie Goldberg, if Swift were to sue anyone, it would probably have to be focused on the AI companies themselves. USA Today reports, It’s possible that the faked Read More ›

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Man is using virtual reality headset. Image with glitch effect.

The Apple Vision Pro is Here

What exactly is the point of this new, painfully expensive piece of gadgetry?

Given what we’ve seen so far, it seems like this new release from one of the world’s foremost technology companies is more of a fancy toy than a genuine tool.

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selective focus of robotic arm holding glass of water and person taking notes at wooden table

Japanese Novelist Who Won Prestigious Literary Award Unabashedly Used ChatGPT

Meanwhile, authors in the United States are waging war against AI for copyright violation

While stylistically, the prose AI “created” for Karan’s novel might be “flawless,” it lacks credibility because it lacks the human voice.

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In a dystopian future, a group of people wearing white, futuristic clothing stands inside a virtual reality, an ominous reminder of the uncertain fate of humanity

Tech Billionaires and Their Science Fiction Dreams

They're mistaking cautionary tales for instruction manuals.

Tech investors and entrepreneurs are self-fulfilling old prophecies. One also thinks of Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, a dystopian classic published in 1953.

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Earphones and mobile phone with podcast app on screen

Napster, Spotify, and AI: How Will AI Escape Copyright Woes?

Robert J. Marks on AI and learning from past copyright cases.

Copyright lawsuits are abounding against generative AI. Since the advent of ChatGPT in late 2022, various companies, artists, and writers have raised concerns over AI’s plagiaristic tendencies. Robert J. Marks, host of the Mind Matters podcast, has the story over at Newsmax. Marks recalls the debacle of Napster, a music streaming service that provided music for “free” without payment to the artists. Not surprisingly, it was soon shut down. So how will it fare with generative AI? What’s the solution to all the impending legal woes in the realm of AI? Marks writes, Today’s Spotify keeps automatic records of song frequency and, from subscriber’s payments, distributes royalties accordingly. Similar methods could be applied to compensate content creators by generative AI. It’s not Read More ›

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World War II airplane on formation

The Transhumanist Delusion of the Nazis

"All the Light We Cannot See" shows what can happen when the delusions of transhumanism join forces with an appalling ideology.

The Nazis were keen on creating a superhuman race with unsurpassable physical, intellectual, and (ironically) moral qualities.

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Copyright symbol. The word 'Copyright' typed on retro typewriter. Business, copyright concept. Beautiful background.

Does ChatGPT Depend on Copyright Violation to Function?

Without copyrighted material, ChatGPT has slim pickings to go on.

ChatGPT, the large language model developed by OpenAI, might seem like it generates novel content, but of course we know that it partakes in what’s generally called “scraping.” It takes pre-existing material on the Internet in response to the prompt a human user inserts. Not surprisingly, the folks who put things on the Internet for a living, like writers and artists, haven’t taken so kindly to AI’s online sleuthing. In fact, a number of artists, writers (including George R. R. Martin, Jonathan Franzen, and John Grisham) and even news outlets have sued OpenAI over copyright infringement allegations. What’s fascinating, though, is that OpenAI hasn’t tried to dodge the allegation but freely admits that ChatGPT depends on copyrighted material to function. Read More ›

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Blurred crowd of unrecognizable at the street

This New Year, Resolve to Stay Human

This year, we will continue to declare that human beings are unique and exceptional.

The transhumanist vision of life seeks to supplant our human limits with endless knowledge and longevity through the collective online database of humanity.

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3d illustration futuristic background with large sphere and neon dots

The Two Visions of AI Technology

Competing views of AI's potential comprise a new struggle in Silicon Valley.

Perhaps the doomers have a dystopian and exaggerated fear of AI, but a discussion about the new technology’s potential harms still needs to be had.

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Suggestion and feedback sharing for improvement. Listen to team feedback to improve work efficiency. Team communication skill, engagement, idea sharing, open mind, customer feedback and consulting.

Substack Gets It. AI Can’t Replace Human Writers

It was encouraging to see the up-and-coming writing platform boldly herald the uniqueness of human creativity.

So long as there are human beings around, there will always be a need for human writers.

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Teenage boy in a bedroom listening to music through his smartphone

New Report: Parents, Don’t Give Your Kids Smartphones

This has become a national health crisis.

Haidt writes in The Atlantic that smartphones ought to be banned from schools because “they impede learning, stunt relationships, and lessen belonging.”

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people in the art gallery center

Why AI Can’t Create Genuine Beauty

AI, though a helpful tool in certain contexts, cannot replace the intentionality and creativity of the human person.

If our experiences are all just brain chemicals responding to different gradations of light, it would seem nigh impossible to defend beauty.

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robot article editor writing publicity post robotic journalist copywriting selection and verification artificial intelligence vector scene

Sports Illustrated Used AI-Generated Authors

Human authors for a human audience, please.

Maybe some people like to read articles written by Dave the algorithm who lives and writes from Fiji, but I am not among them.

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Chat with AI or Artificial Intelligence. Young businessman chatting with a smart AI or artificial intelligence using an artificial intelligence chatbot developed by OpenAI.

Okay, Never Mind. Sam Altman Returns to OpenAI

The OpenAI CEO is back after a brief absence.

OpenAI is creating technology that, in Altman’s view, apparently needs to be fairly tightly regulated. And yet…he’s responsible for creating it.

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