Mind Matters News and Analysis on Natural and Artificial Intelligence

CategoryArtificial Intelligence

vote-for-rob
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post
Author
Denyse O'Leary
Date
November 1, 2018
Categorized
Artificial Intelligence, Social Factors
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Should robots run for office?

A tech analyst sees a threat to democracy if they don’t
Denyse O'Leary
November 1, 2018
Artificial Intelligence, Social Factors
In an adapted excerpt from Future Politics: Living Together in a World Transformed by Tech (2018), titled “Mr. Robot goes to Washington: How AI will change democracy,” lawyer and tech writer Jamie Susskind: envisions AI as not only fighting “fake news” but voting for us and helping to draft legislation. It’s a sobering thought, how far some tech analysts would be prepared to go in order to impose their own vision of order on an unruly but stable political system. Read More ›
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post
Author
Denyse O'Leary
Date
October 25, 2018
Categorized
Artificial Intelligence, Social Factors
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How AI could run the world

Its killer apps, in physicist Max Tegmark's tale, include a tsunami of "message" films
Denyse O'Leary
October 25, 2018
Artificial Intelligence, Social Factors
In traditional fairy tales, an explanatory gap can be addressed by magic. After all, most readers will grant a writer one impossibility (for example, that a boy’s horse has human intelligence) just to get the story moving. Unfortunately, science fiction is one genre that doesn’t work that way. The author must make the claim sound like science, a problem Tegmark vaults right over. Read More ›
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post
Author
Denyse O'Leary
Date
October 23, 2018
Categorized
Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Social Factors
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Could AI write novels?

George Orwell thought so, as long as no thinking was involved
Denyse O'Leary
October 23, 2018
Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Social Factors
Serious literature will always be written, to borrow a phrase from Winston Churchill, in “blood, toil, tears and sweat” because imaging the human condition accurately is part of its nature. And if the writer lives in an unfree society, serious literature will also be written in fear. Read More ›
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post
Author
Eric Holloway
Date
October 16, 2018
Categorized
Artificial Intelligence, Natural Intelligence
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Does information theory support design in nature?

William Dembski makes a convincing case, using accepted information theory principles relevant to computer science
Eric Holloway
October 16, 2018
Artificial Intelligence, Natural Intelligence
Intelligent design theory is sometimes said to lack any practical application. One straightforward application is that, because intelligence can create information and computation cannot, human interaction will improve computational performance. Read More ›
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post
Author
Denyse O'Leary
Date
October 2, 2018
Categorized
Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning
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Deep Learning won’t solve AI

AlphaGo pioneer: We need “another dozen or half-a-dozen breakthroughs”
Denyse O'Leary
October 2, 2018
Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning
Hassabis: "AlphaGo doesn't understand language but we would like them to build up to this symbolic level of reasoning — maths, language, and logic. Read More ›
samuel-castro-71639-unsplash
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post
Author
Denyse O'Leary
Date
September 25, 2018
Categorized
Artificial Intelligence, Natural Intelligence, Neuroscience, Social Factors
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Inner peace: Is there software for that?

Tech billionaire funds neuroscience in a search for the secret of contentment
Denyse O'Leary
September 25, 2018
Artificial Intelligence, Natural Intelligence, Neuroscience, Social Factors
His approach to neuroscience is very different from that of the Dalai Lama, who facilitates neuroscience research to better understand contemplation as a path to inner peace. Chen’s focus is more on developing virtual reality. Read More ›
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post
Author
Eric Holloway
Date
September 19, 2018
Categorized
Artificial Intelligence
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Artificial intelligence is impossible

Meaningful information vs artificial intelligence
Eric Holloway
September 19, 2018
Artificial Intelligence
Because the law of independence conservation states that no combination of randomness and determinism can create mutual information, then likewise no Turing machine nor artificial intelligence can create mutual information. Thus, the goal of artificial intelligence researchers to reproduce human intelligence with a computer program is impossible to achieve. Read More ›
George Montañez
Type
post
Author
Mind Matters
Date
September 7, 2018
Categorized
Artificial Intelligence, Events, Machine Learning, Natural Intelligence
Tagged

What is learning anyway?

Machine learning specialist George Montañez reflects on the question in a video excerpt from the CNAI gala
Mind Matters
September 7, 2018
Artificial Intelligence, Events, Machine Learning, Natural Intelligence
Can we make approximations that are so close to ourselves that the fact that they are approximations no longer matters? Read More ›
Building a better future
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post
Author
Jonathan Bartlett
Date
September 6, 2018
Categorized
Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Social Factors
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“Artificial” Artificial Intelligence

What happens when AI needs a human I?
Jonathan Bartlett
September 6, 2018
Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Social Factors
Artificial intelligence often fails at crucial points. It must then be supplemented by human intelligence. Many software systems that look to their users like pure advanced artificial intelligence hide a lot of human effort behind a technological mask. Read More ›
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post
Author
Michael Egnor
Date
September 5, 2018
Categorized
Artificial Intelligence, Social Factors
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AI is indeed a threat to democracy

But not in quite the way historian Yuval Noah Harari thinks
Michael Egnor
September 5, 2018
Artificial Intelligence, Social Factors
Rapid, wide dissemination of ideas we don’t understand is the prime threat AI poses to humanity. It is an existential threat to human dignity and flourishing. And this threat is made graver, not less grave, by our democracy, which, as Plato understood, is the necessary soil of tyranny. Read More ›
benjamin-davies-361151-unsplash
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post
Author
Denyse O'Leary
Date
August 31, 2018
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Could AI understand the universe?

World-renowned chemist thinks it might understand what we can’t, including consciousness
Denyse O'Leary
August 31, 2018
Atkins is arguing that the fact that we do not understand what consciousness is, far from being a barrier to creating artificial consciousness, offers the hope that, once we do create them, artificially conscious entities will understand consciousness but we won’t. The proposition sounds a bit confused, no? Read More ›
HAL-like-lights
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Author
Robert J. Marks
Date
August 30, 2018
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Could HAL 9000 ever be built?

I say yes. Some reflections on the 50th Year Anniversary of 2001: A Space Odyssey
Robert J. Marks
August 30, 2018
At one point on the trip from Earth to Jupiter, HAL becomes suspicious that the crew might be sabotaging the mission. HAL then purposely tries to kill all the crew. The most logical explanation for this act is a coding error. HAL was programmed to operate on the basis that the mission took priority over human life. Read More ›
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Author
Denyse O'Leary
Date
August 30, 2018
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Robogeddon!! Pause.

Wait. This just in: AI is NOT killing all our jobs
Denyse O'Leary
August 30, 2018
Jay Richards, author of The Human Advantage: The Future of American Work in an Age of Smart Machines,sees it as more of a retooling than a meltdown. But retooling does mean change, work, cost, and risk. Read More ›
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Author
Robert Verrill, OP
Date
August 27, 2018
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Can a game prove that computers could really think?

Philosopher Daniel Dennett thinks so. Let's apply Occam's Razor and see
Robert Verrill, OP
August 27, 2018
While I agree with Dennett that Occam’s Razor shouldn’t be used overzealously, we shouldn’t be too reluctant to use it either. The reason why Dennett rejects Occam’s Razor in the Game of Life is that if he didn’t, then nothing in the Game of Life would be capable of possessing cognitive states. Read More ›
Close-up Shot of Hacker using Keyboard. There is Coffee Cups and Computer Monitors with Various Information.
Type
post
Author
Denyse O'Leary
Date
August 20, 2018
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Sometimes the ‘bots turn out to be humans

That “lifelike” effect was easier to come by than some might think
Denyse O'Leary
August 20, 2018
Companies sometimes pretend to be using AI or machine learning when they are actually using human employees for various reasons. One reason is that they have promised potential investors more high tech than they can deliver. Sometimes, as we learned recently at The Guardian, it gets a bit sticky... Read More ›
peter-kent-32354-unsplash
Type
post
Author
Robert J. Marks
Date
August 16, 2018
Categorized
Artificial Intelligence
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Screenwriters’ Jobs Are Not Threatened by AI

Unless the public starts preferring mishmash to creativity
Robert J. Marks
August 16, 2018
Artificial Intelligence
An AI-generated film is not an altogether new idea. Rule-based expert systems were used to write short plays over a half century ago, in the early 1960's. Then, as now, don’t expect creativity. That is not what AI does. Read More ›
Roboter Arme
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Author
Eric Holloway
Date
August 15, 2018
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Could one single machine invent everything?

The king’s perpetual innovation machine was all ready to roll but then a skeptic butted in
Eric Holloway
August 15, 2018
Computers can never originate, they only regurgitate. Humans, on the other hand, can come up with original ideas, i.e. they write the programs in the first place. So, my proof shows that the human mind cannot be a computer program. Read More ›
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Author
Denyse O'Leary
Date
August 14, 2018
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George Gilder: Life after Google will be okay

People will take ownership of their own data, cutting out the giant “middle man”
Denyse O'Leary
August 14, 2018
In his new book, he calls the successor era he envisions the “cryptocosm,” referring to the private encryption of data, represented by technologies such as blockchain. Read More ›
Cropped shot of call center operator in headset working and talking with client
Type
post
Author
Denyse O'Leary
Date
August 11, 2018
Categorized
Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Natural Intelligence
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Why machines can’t think as we do

As philosopher Michael Polanyi noted, much that we know is hard to codify or automate
Denyse O'Leary
August 11, 2018
Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Natural Intelligence
Human life is full of these challenges. Some knowledge simply cannot be conveyed—or understood or accepted—in a propositional form. For example, a nurse counselor may see clearly that her elderly post-operative patient would thrive better in a retirement home. But she cannot just tell him so. Read More ›