CategoryArtificial Intelligence
Large Language Models (LLMs) Flunk Word Game Connections
Despite hype, ChatGPT and its competitors, in all their iterations, are still just text-generators based on statistical patterns in the text databases they train on
Edge of Sentience Summarizes Research on Animals’, AIs’ Feelings
And animal rights laws as well. But there is a dark side to Jonathan Birch’s approach too…Philosophy prof Jonathan Birch, principal investigator of the Animal Sentience Project at the London School of Economics, has written a book on whether and how animals feel things: The Edge of Sentience (Oxford University Press 2024). It’s not as arcane a topic as it might at first appear. It shows up in new legislation and think tanks. At Amazon, we learn, for example, “In 2021, he led a review for the UK government that shaped the Animal Welfare (Sentience) Act 2022. In 2022-23, he was part of a working group that investigated the question of sentience in AI.” And as Birch told Marc Bekoff at Psychology Today, I’m probably best-known for my work on invertebrate sentience, which is one part Read More ›
Mind Matters News: Top Ten Stories of 2024
... with some brief comments on their significance
Evolution Journal Editors Resign After AI Takes Over
Publisher Elsevier seems to have created a lot of extra work for the editors by introducing AI-generated errors into the publishing process
Another Warning That the AI Bubble Is Near Bursting…
AI analyst Gary Marcus: There is no principled solution to hallucinations in systems of this type
In Machines We Trust
In an age of AI, who stands up for humans?If you believe the media, AI has made both of us obsolete. We need to resign ourselves to an age of “thinking machines” in which human guidance and creativity are superfluous. This kind of thinking is false — and dangerous. AI will never become conscious. It will never truly be autonomous. It will always require human input and control. But if we treat AI as if it can be autonomous, we will open the door to the kind of manipulation and tyranny warned about by C.S. Lewis in his classic book The Abolition of Man. Unfortunately, there are few voices in the public square right now offering a sane assessment of both the capabilities and limits of AI. As a Read More ›
First Federal Report on Drone Sightings Flunks Credibility Test
Whether reports are human- or AI-generated, they need careful scrutiny
A Thought Experiment on the Mind, the Brain — and AI
In a crowded AI marketplace, a nerd confronts a philosopher on subject of the human mind
AI Adoption is Slowing Amidst the “Biggest Gamble in Business History”
Workers and companies aren't buying the AI hype
Want to Talk to Jesus? Consult a Bot
Is AI changing the way people pray?
Machine Intelligence and Reasoning: We Are Not on a Path to AGI
AI guru François Chollet’s Abstraction and Reasoning Corpus (ARC) proves we’re not on a path to AGI
From Data to Thoughts: Why Language Models Hallucinate
The limits of today’s language models and paths to real cognition
Do Fantasy Sports Tell Us Something About Artificial Intelligence?
My biggest takeaway from my own involvement is how well fantasy football illuminates some weaknesses of artificial intelligence (AI)
Why Human Intelligence Thrives Where Machines Fail
We're worried about AI and trust. We should be worried about something deeper
As AI Bots Hit the Scene, What Will Happen to Romance and Marriage?
How fares romance and marriage in the 21st century? In America, at least, it's not looking goodIn decades past, people tended to meet each other in their local communities through church, school, family friends, and so on. Go back further and it was common for marriages to be arranged solely for economic purposes. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen was subversive because Elizabeth Bennett risks her family’s economic security by marrying Mr. Darcy purely for love. But, I digress. Trae Stephens writes for Pirate Wires on how the marriage rate has gone down alongside the advent of digital technologies, and how this is, more than likely, not coincidental. Particularly with the rise of AI bots, like the ones published by Character.AI, millions of people are living out romances with digital avatars perfectly tailored to their whims Read More ›
Report: Large Language Models Don’t “Think”
Also, Apple Intelligence might not be so intelligent after allA research team at Apple is now sharing that “state-of-the-art” AI bots are failing basic arithmetic problems according to Los Angeles Times. Michael Hiltzik writes, The Apple team found “catastrophic performance drops” by those models when they tried to parse simple mathematical problems written in essay form. In this example, the systems tasked with the question often didn’t understand that the size of the kiwis have nothing to do with the number of kiwis Oliver has. Some, consequently, subtracted the five undersized kiwis from the total and answered “185.” Human schoolchildren, the researchers posited, are much better at detecting the difference between relevant information and inconsequential curveballs. Apple has recently been rolling out tons of new advertisements promoting the iPhone Read More ›
Are We Now Giving Nobel Prizes to Cheerleaders?
Even though both John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton are brilliant researchers, there were much more obviously deserving recipients
How To Sue A Chatbot For Causing Suicide
If your child committed suicide because an online chatbot effectively encouraged him to do so, could you sue the chatbot makers?