CategoryArtificial Intelligence
The Real Threat AI Poses to Us Is Created by Widespread Abuse
In If Anyone Builds It, Yudkowsky and Soares are not really grappling with this problem
Can an AI Really Develop a Mind of Its Own?
Specifically, can an AI develop a mind with its own goals and desires, capable of plans and strategies — as the authors of If Anyone Builds It believe?
COSM 2025 Talk: Where Are We With AI Right Now? Really.
Recent developments should focus attention on Uli Homann's talk
Natural Intelligence Creates Information; AI Processes It
Human intelligence creates new information through free, purposeful choices, while AI can only process/transform existing data according to predetermined rules
Health Care: AI Changes Everything. But What Will the Changes Be?
A panel at COSM 2025 next month can help us separate the hope from the hype
Altman Says Adults Can Use ChatGPT to Create “Erotic” Content
Pushback against Altman's post was swift, as one might expect
AI Psychosis and the Need for Human Exceptionalism
I pronounce you husband and chatbot?AI is a tool with certain potentials and limits across various fields, but basic anthropological confusion can do a lot of damage. What happens when AI programs cease to be seen as mere tools, meant to used in limited ways and used wisely, and are considered “persons?” It sounds silly to pose the question, but that’s where we are. Futurism writer Frank Landymore reports on an Ohio legislative measure to ban human-AI marital unions. The bill must be intended to be preventative, since AI bots and programs aren’t recognized as legal persons (yet), but it speaks to a cultural trend that, if undealt with, could blow out of proportion. Landymore writes, Popular chatbots are capable of being eerily lifelike, effortlessly Read More ›
AI’s Sweet Talk: How Artificial Companions Steal Our Humanity
Andrew McDiarmid and Janet Parshall discuss the sometimes tragic consequences of needy people becoming dependent on AI-fueled fantasy relationships
Philosopher of Mind and Language John Searle Has Died
His Chinese Room thought experiment, an argument for why computers can seem clever without having minds, was widely understood among the lay public
Measuring Machine Intelligence Using Turing Test 2.0
Podcast: Georgios Mappouras’s updated approach asks whether machines can go beyond imitation to produce new knowledge
Artificial Intelligence, Science and the Limits of Knowledge
In Part 3, I show that AI, like science, has limits. It depends on narrowing a problem: making it specific, discarding most possibilities, sealing it inside a representation and specification
Consciousness Can’t Be Uploaded as AI? — Of Course It Can’t!
Converting ideas and memories into bits in a computer program does not recreate in the computer the person whose minds and memories they are — only a simulation
Surprise: Artificial intelligence Is Still Just Automation
I wrote this in 2016. And it is still true in 2025. A reflection in three partsWhen I first wrote this almost a decade ago, “AI” was already a cultural Rorschach test. To some, it was exciting and futuristic. To others, it was ominous, Orwellian, or just marketing spin. Automation, by contrast, was the unglamorous cousin that conjured images of soulless machines taking over the last shreds of human purpose. But from the start, my view was simple: what we call “AI” today is still just automation. And automation is not a mind. That argument has aged better than I expected. In the years since, we’ve seen an explosion of so-called AI — from self-driving cars to ChatGPT — yet the distinction between AI and automation remains almost universally misunderstood. Recently, computational linguist Emily Bender and Read More ›
At COSM 2025: When AI Meets Tinseltown… Look Out!
Superagent Ari Emanuel will be back at COSM this year, to talk about how AI is reimagining Hollywood
AI: Tool or Companion?
Personalized AI systems only make sense in a friendless society.
Internal Meta Document Reveals Shockingly Permissive Standards
Advocates call for more safety as AI bots flood the sceneAccording to a report from Reuters, Meta, parent company of Facebook, has allowed its chatbot to flirt and have “sensual” conversations with children. Meta AI is now accessible on various Meta platforms, and age limits are essentially suggestions, not requirements. Anyone can lie about their age and create an account. Jeff Horwitz writes, These and other findings emerge from a Reuters review of the Meta document, which discusses the standards that guide its generative AI assistant, Meta AI, and chatbots available on Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram, the company’s social-media platforms. Meta confirmed the document’s authenticity, but said that after receiving questions earlier this month from Reuters, the company removed portions which stated it is permissible for chatbots to flirt and engage Read More ›
Is AI Truly Creative? Here Is the Ultimate Test
People use the term “creative” in different ways. We need to define it rigorously and use a test based on that agreed definition
Science Site: Is the AI Gold Rush Over? Has AI Just Plateaued?
The GPT-5 chatbot rollout has been so messy that serious questions are beginning to float above the seemingly automated hype