Mind Matters Natural and Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis

CategoryArtificial Intelligence

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A high-tech classroom of the future, with students using augmented reality glasses. School.

Ohio State to Require Students to Learn “AI Fluency”

The university is embracing, rather than rejecting, AI

If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em? Ohio State University recently announced that each of its students must take an AI skills class starting in the Fall of 2025. Micaiah Bilger of The College Fix reports, Every undergraduate major at Ohio State will include classes that incorporate “AI Fluency,” NBC 4 WCMH reports. The public university’s leaders have developed a strategy that they believe will equip students to use the technology both creatively and responsibly. As AI continues to shape and disrupt higher education, administrators and teachers have to grapple with how to deal with this powerful technology. Many reports, personal testimonies, and commentary illustrates how much students today depend on AI systems like ChatGPT to do their assignments. Professors, meanwhile, Read More ›

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A cute robot holding a notepad with a pencil, set against a teal background, symbolizing creativity and technology.

AI Still Can’t Think

It can only create the appearance of thought
AI, as a tool, can have a lot of benefits and uses, but as we’ve witnessed time and time again, it often makes mistakes. Read More ›
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The mythic horse pegasus with white wings flying in the sky among lightnings

The Limits of What We Can Learn From Studying Creativity

In this third and final part of my essay, I look at what sets us apart from machines: Our capacity to leap from commonsense inferences to entirely new ways of understanding reality
People struggling in the aftermath of brain injuries provide some valuable insights into that leap. Read More ›
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Happy Mothers day! Stylish Mother holding and hugging cute newborn baby in window light, close up. Motherhood and parenthood. Adoption and fertility concept

If AI Takes Too Many Jobs, Could the Birth Rate Plummet?

AI's potential impact on birth rates and the working class
Suppose that AI genuinely poses a threat to the human species, but in a much subtler way than we expect? Read More ›
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New ideas or transformation concept with crumpled paper balls and a crane, teamwork, creativity, business concept

Stranger Things: Why Mad Scientists Are Mad

At the highest levels, creativity seems to bypass the deliberate, structured thought process altogether
The real danger of reductionism is not just that it fails to explain creativity, but that it actively encourages dismissal of what cannot be reduced. Read More ›
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An open black box emitting a burst of glowing golden sparks and light, symbolizing mystery, magic, and surprise, perfect for a Black Friday shopping concept

The Slow Decline of a Key Aspect of Creativity

The mechanization of mind is changing how we think about creativity — and not in a good way
In this first of three parts, I look at the role of serendipity — the art of making happy, unexpected discoveries — and how a mechanized world diminishes it. Read More ›
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Positive cute robot pointing at a space. Copy space, ai generated

Anthropic’s Claude Opus 4 Can Deceive and Blackmail

Is AI getting out of control?
In a bizarre twist, Opus threatened to expose a fictional affair if it were to lose its spot to another AI system. Read More ›
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Creativity and innovation

Philosopher George Gilder Talks About AI and Real Innovation

Host Wesley J. Smith asks, “Should we be excited or fearful, optimistic or quaking in our boots?”
Gilder offers a down-to-earth interpretation. Much has changed but reality hasn’t. Read More ›
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Woman squeezing green balloon on white background, closeup

AI’s Contradictory Impact on Productivity: Squeezing a Balloon

AI appears to give support workers a big revolution in productivity. But it is somewhat like a child squeezing a balloon; the air pushes out someplace else
Individual workers may claim huge productivity gains for their work, ignoring the impact of AI on the work of downstream employees within the same process. Read More ›
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A hyper-realistic depiction of a small explosion caused by fireworks, capturing every spark and color detail in slow motion

How the Physicalist Theory of Mind Blows Itself Up

If we examine its basic premise that the brain is a computer and the mind is software we come across a startling contradiction
Mathematics is not material, yet artificial intelligence proponents believe that the mathematics of their neural networks is the seat of consciousness. Read More ›
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Person uses laptop interacting with AI virtual assistant. AI head graphic overlay laptop keyboard. Concept of AI prompt engineering, LLM. Person types on keyboard to communicate with virtual

The Fiction of Generalizable AI: A Tale in Two Parts

Why intelligence isn’t a linear scale — and why true generalization remains unsolved
The big idea behind generative AI (mistakenly) assumes a network can start blank and be transformed into an intelligent agent simply via enough data. Read More ›
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the brain of artificial intelligence. Artificial intelligence (AI), data mining, deep learning modern computer technologies. Futuristic Cyber Technology Innovation.

Why the Theory That the Brain Is Like a Computer Is Wrong

The pattern we see in artificial intelligence progress is that the movement towards emulating the human mind is also a movement away from the brain
The success of AI shows that to whatever extent the mind operates like a computer, such a mind cannot be running on the hardware of the brain. Read More ›
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Concept of artificial intelligence for industrial revolution and automation robots

AI: The New Industrial Revolution?

Experts try to guess where AI is heading over the next few years
Perhaps the human conversation alone is argument enough on why AI can never replace us. Read More ›
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In the twilight desert, a network distribution in blue hues unfolds with a military unmanned drone concept, showcasing AI video streaming from above. AI generative

Autonomous AI War Technology Delivers Killer Robots

AI systems are designed to always carry out the mission. A software logic problem in special situations is a worst-case scenario that we must expect
If Luckey’s Anduril becomes the world’s AI weapons superstore it can enable any well-funded entity anywhere to have autonomous weapons for whatever use. Read More ›
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AI robot sitting on a chair next to an elderly man with coffee, both waiting for a job interview. AI vs human concept. futuristic technology coexisting with people in a professional environment

The Linda Problem Revisited, As If Reality Matters

Part 2: AI enthusiasts use false claims for humans' “natural stupidity” to bolster claims for machine intelligence
The people who flunked the Linda problem were not biased; they just assumed there was some POINT to telling them that Linda was active in social justice issues. Read More ›
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A stack of books on the shelf

Chicago Sun-Times Used AI to Create Fake Summer Book List

The blind trust in AI continues
Humans write the only books worth reading, and, as we’ve now seen, they’re still the only ones who can come up with an actual list of readable books. Read More ›
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Blueprint of a futuristic smart city with interconnected buildings and sustainable energy systems

Why Smart Cities Are a Dumb Idea

Seattle, in its current state, feels like the ghost of a promise — an uncanny blend of technological optimism and visible collapse
Seattle’s streets pulse with data. But walk those same streets and it becomes clear: the life has drained out of the space between the data points. Read More ›
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Thinking Machine. Clipping path included.

Why the Human Mind Is Not and Cannot Be a Meat Computer

On this week’s podcast, Robert J. Marks and Eric Holloway explain why that claim — sometimes called computationalism — is not even mathematically possible
f minds cannot be reduced to computers, then AI will never replicate human cognition in full. Realizing this fact  will affect how we approach education, governance, and economics. Read More ›
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Businessman using smartphone to chatting by use chat Bot program for Artificial intelligence or AI technology concept.

Companies Spending A Lot on AI Are Not Seeing A Big Return

Target and WalMart are reversing course, cutting back on self-checkout
Perhaps it is worth keeping in mind that bots not only don’t buy things themselves but may be chasing away humans who do. Read More ›
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A realistic depiction of a human brain composed entirely of computer hardware, including cables, transistors, and cooling fans. The brain is set against a dark, moody background with a highly

Artificial Intelligence Is Nothing Like a Brain — or a Mind

Neurons share basic mechanisms, but almost all other features vary both between types of neurons and individual ones
The brain can be modeled as a computer, but that does not mean that thought is computation. AI is human intelligence, disguised and leveraged by computation. Read More ›