Mind Matters Natural and Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis

CategoryArtificial Intelligence

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Chatbot AI Artificial Intelligence technology virtual conversation assistant support mobile smart phone online application chatting with customer service automatic answering. 3d rendering.

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 ›

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Man working online from home with pet using laptop Ginger cat looks at screen interested in computer Interrupting while working on internet : Generative AI

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

Fourteen-year-old Sewell Setzer’s suicide in Orlando offered a window into the problem of lonely people confusing confuse digital imitation with real intimacy.

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empty classic red chinese room

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

The Chinese Room thought experiment helped us see the nature of computation, as opposed to human thinking.

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Futuristic and conceptual image representing smart integration, featuring the letters 'AI' stylized in a high-tech font, surrounded by intricate circuit connections, advanced artificial intelligence

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

Mappouras’s General Intelligence Threshold offers a test question: Can the system generate insights that were not directly programmed into it?

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mountain peak in low clouds

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

Here’s the problem with artificial general intelligence: asking how to make systems “general” is asking how to remove the very constraints that made them work.

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Humanity Upload – Concept of Digital Consciousness and Technological Evolution

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

The uploaded quirks and memories may be a good simulation of the deceased person but it is not a surviving self. It is just data.

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Advanced High Precision Robot Arm inside Bright Electronics Factory. Electronic Devices Production Industry. Component Installation on Circuit Board. Fully Automated Modern PCB Assembly Line.

Surprise: Artificial intelligence Is Still Just Automation

I wrote this in 2016. And it is still true in 2025. A reflection in three parts

When 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 ›

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AI Generated. AI Generative. Amrican miami california road trip with palms. Adventure travel vacation vibe. Graphic Art

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

It’s too soon to tell where AI Hollywood will fall between a predicted Armageddon and a Golden Age. But Emanuel’s opinion would surely be important to know.

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Artificial intelligence chat bot connected to computer processing unit

AI: Tool or Companion?

Personalized AI systems only make sense in a friendless society.

One of the problems of AI-human “relationships” is that, by definition, we cannot relate to a computer, nor can a computer relate to us.

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Person using laptop with code and glowing ai chatbot analyzing social media interactions

Internal Meta Document Reveals Shockingly Permissive Standards

Advocates call for more safety as AI bots flood the scene

According 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 ›

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A mesmerizing illustration of mathematics featuring a vibrant swirling vortex of numbers symbols and geometric shapes in shades of electric blue crimson and gold set against a rich dark gray backgroun

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

AI does not, at present, originate the kind of deep insight required to solve a open mathematical problem.

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gold panning for gold

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

If this is a tech Gold Rush, based on recent news, we might be better off selling shovels than investing in the gold.

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Cutting-edge robotic chatbot utilizing AI for support in the technology and corporate sectors.

Jim Acosta Interviews AI Avatar of Dead Man

The AI was a stand-in for Joaquin Oliver, a young man who was tragically killed in the Parkland High School shooting in 2018

Media figures were quick to denounce Acosta’s choice to interview an AI system as if it were some kind of genuine embodiment of the young Oliver.

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Robot controls the world

Erik J. Larson Reviews Sobering Recent Book on AI Shaping Society

In the Los Angeles Review of Books, he examines the ideas in Robert Sidelsky’s recent book, Mindless - and their implications

Sidelsky, Larson tells us, thinks our problems stem not from the machines themselves but from the stories we’ve told about them.

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World Puzzle

Mistaking the World for a Puzzle Risks a New McCarthyism

In Part 2, I look at the imaginary world we invent when we succumb to puzzle thinking

It’s imaginary because the clues that matter — why people starve, why peace fails, why the planet overheats — are not hidden in larger and larger datasets.

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Physics or mathematical equations on a universe decorative LED background give the impression of interstellar space travel.

How Studying AI Helped a Prof See Why the Mind is Non-Physical

A computer science professor shows, using logic, how you must be more than mere matter

Chatbots process enormous amounts of data and produce convincing outputs but, he says, they do not grasp the meaning of the concepts they manipulate.

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Ai music composer or generator with robot with vinyl record

AI Songs and Bands Are Creeping into Spotify

It's official. The bots are now coming after the bards

Recently, Spotify was found to be publishing AI-generated songs by deceased musicians. In addition, AI bands are starting to pop up.

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robot writing in book for large language model and artificial intelligence chatbot concept

Can AI Legally Be Trained Using All the Books in the World?

Judge rules in support of chatbot Claude — except when training materials are pirated

The pirated digital book copies sank Anthropic on a fundamental point. It was not “fair use.”

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AI Replacing Doctors: The Rise of Robo-Healers - An Ominous Gaze into a Tomorrow Where Machines Don White Coats, Administering Precision Care and Revolutionizing the Medical Landscape.

Is Microsoft’s New AI System Better Than Doctors? Probably Not.

A critic notes that Microsoft’s AI system didn’t solve the problems, but merely repeated the solutions that it was trained on

Trying to understand the rationale of big monopolists such as Microsoft and Google is often a fool’s errand.

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Customer data analytics solutions in retail using AI, machine learning, and big data to understand consumer behavior, personalize shopping experiences, and optimize product offerings and pricing

Preemptive Pardon in “Big Beautiful Bill” Protects Big AI

But is Big AI the new “military-industrial complex”?

Common sense says AI companies need to be responsible for their product — just as if it was created directly and disseminated by a human.

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