AI Is No Match for Ambiguity
Many simple sentences confuse AI but not humansBecause computers lack common sense, they cannot interpret statements that assume a background of general knowledge, as the Winograd Schema challenges show.
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The US 2016 Election: Why Big Data Failed
Economics professor Gary Smith sheds light on the surprise resultSome of the stuff that made a difference, they couldn’t put in a computer. Some people say, if you can’t measure it, it doesn’t count but sometimes the things that count can’t be measured.
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AI Delusions: A Statistics Expert Sets Us Straight
We learn why Watson's programmers did not want certain Jeopardy questions askedIf you ask about anything that’s a puzzle, joke, riddle, or sarcasm that you can’t look up in Wikipedia, computers are helpless.
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We Can Imagine Robots That Think and Feel
But does that make them more likely?If Shakespeare is right about imagination, Sophia will certainly break some hearts.
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The Mind Can’t Be Just a Computer
Gödel demonstrated that fact and Turing tried to live with itKurt Gödel (1906–1978) proved that there are truths in mathematical logic that lie outside mathematical logic, which means that the mind cannot be understood simply as a computer.
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How Much Difference Can AI Deep Fakes Really Make in Elections?
Maybe not much and that truth should make us uncomfortable
Will Space Aliens Become a New Majority Religion?
Nearly as many young Americans believe in ET as in God, says religion profPopular culture is looking for high-tech ETs to be its saviors and Silicon Valley aspires to become those ETs. What could possibly go wrong?
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Machine Learning Dates Back To at Least 300 BC
The key to machine learning is not machines but mathematicsMachine learning is not a new technique, but is simply a modern extension of a tool that we have had in our toolbox since the days of the Babylonians. It continues to serve us well to help us extrapolate our data to estimate the value of unknown results and to help find the signal in noisy data.
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In 2018, Sci-Fi Phoned the Seventies, It Seems…
…for high-tech overpopulation scares. How else to explain Avengers’ Thanos?, asks Eric Holloway
How Do You Explain That Machines Won’t Really Think Like People?
Computation cannot become non-computational thought but it is difficult to prove that something can’t happen.
Does Workplace Automation Improve Service or Merely Cut Costs?
Chances are, the CEO won’t know there’s a problem until complaints come in. Elon Musk didn’t
Can AI Make Unique Trail-Blazing Science Discoveries?
It would save us a lot of time but, as Eric Holloway warns, some things can’t be automated, by their very nature
Sorry, Wired: That “Crafty Robot” Doesn’t Write in Languages It’s Never Seen
The artificial intelligence industry is overwhelmed with title inflation and feat hype
If You Think Common Sense Is Easy to Acquire…
Try teaching it to a state-of-the-art self-driving car. Start with snowmen.
Seven Minutes to Goosebumps: Confronting Materialism Head On
A new short film series takes on materialism in science, including that of AI’s pop prophets
Philosopher: Gloom and doom over AI is “silly”
Jay Richards thinks that historian Yuval Noah Harari is wrong to think that AI will necessarily subvert democracyThe idea that machines are capable of replacing us is the topic of many books he has read but, he argues, the thing that really distinguishes us is the capacity for developing creative freedom.
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Yes, There ARE Ghosts in the Machine
And one of them is you
Could AI think like a human, given infinite resources?
Given that the human mind is a halting oracle, the answer is no
How Artificial Intelligence Shapes Our Language
Culture critic Mark Steyn reflects on the Matrix and the red pill, which seems to be everywhere