CategoryArtificial Intelligence
Did an AI Really Learn Human-like Number Sense?
That's the claim, but critics say that humans imposed the number senseDoes artificial intelligence “share our natural ability to make numeric snap judgments”? Researchers observed this knack for numbers in a computer model composed of virtual brain cells, or neurons, called an artificial neural network. After being trained merely to identify objects in images — a common task for AI — the network developed virtual neurons that respond to specific quantities. These artificial neurons are reminiscent of the “number neurons” thought to give humans, birds, bees and other creatures the innate ability to estimate the number of items in a set (SN: 7/7/18, p. 7). This intuition is known as number sense. Maria Temming, “A new AI acquired humanlike ‘number sense’ on its own” at ScienceNews A team led by neurobiologist Read More ›
AI as the Artful Dodger
Watch what happens when I train a neural network on portraits of 56 famous scientists, starting the process with a right eye
Autopilot Is NOT Just Another Word for “Asleep at the Wheel”
As a recent fatal accident in Florida shows, even sober, attentive drivers often put too much trust into Tesla’s Autopilot system, with disastrous resultsLike all tools, AI systems, when used correctly, can augment our abilities, but they are nowhere near replacing us. And we endanger ourselves, and others, when we believe they can.
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Could AI Authentically Create Anything?
Brendan Dixon: The first question posed to me as an artist was,“What are you trying to say?”Du Sautoy believes that AI will “in the distant future” achieve consciousness. For that, we have no evidence. It is a statement of religious faith akin to that of Anthony Levandowski's AI Church.
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Younger Thinkers Now Argue That Free Will Is Real
The laws of physics do not rule it out, they sayAssuming this trend among younger thinkers persists, the philosophical discussions around AI are not making determinism seem necessary or inevitable. And that, when you think of it, is an odd fate for determinism.
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What One Thing Do AI, Evolution, and Entrepreneurship All Need?
They all need an input of creativity to make things happen.Programs for AI and evolution share the limitation that nothing creative happens without the guidance of a programmer. And a thriving economy based on creative entrepreneurship is one of the things that cannot be automated.
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George Gilder: Why Student Debt Should Simply Be Wiped Out
Universities are preparing students to resent, not join, the new decentralized economy“The colleges that took this money and enriched themselves, and hired hundreds more bureaucrats should have to give the money back.”
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Why AI Fails To Actually Create Things
Only one of the traits du Sautoy suggests is an essential part of creativityDu Sautoy’s fourth trait—“originality of a truly independent nature”—is a useful part of the definition of creativity. It is, however, the one trait that he admits is missing from AI’s “creative” attempts
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George Gilder: Why Does Google Seem To Be Having a Corporate Nervous Breakdown?
Gilder tells Forbes that its whole culture is “kind of self-defeating and wrong.”"This whole business of aggregating people by giving them free stuff—in order to collect data to provide guidance for advertisers—it’s just a circuitous means of a business plan that I don’t think will finally prevail."
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Why AI Appears To Create Things
When AlphaGo made a winning move, it exhibited no more creative insight than when it played pedestrian movesOur surprise at AlphaGo’s move says more about our inability to predict what a program will do than about any creative effort of the program. We’ve known for decades that we cannot predict the results of any moderately complex computer program.
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George Gilder: Why Entrepreneurship Can’t Just Be Automated
In business, an entrepreneur is the “oracle,” the one element that cannot be programmed or computedCreativity always comes as a surprise to us. If it didn’t, we wouldn’t need it. We could program it on our machines. But because it’s always surprising, it can’t be planned.
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We Need a Better Test for True AI Intelligence
Better than Turing or Lovelace. The difficulty is that intelligence, like randomness, is mathematically undefinableThe operation of human intelligence must be non-physical because it transcends Turing machines, which in turn transcend every physical mechanism.
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Are we risking a planetary AI intelligence explosion?
Or are our problems with AI the usual boring stuff we prefer to avoid?Mind Matters News asked some of our house computer science experts for comment.
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Maybe the robot will do you a favor and snatch your job
The historical pattern is that drudgery gets automated, not creativityFear of toxic but improbable futures sometimes distracts us from clearly understanding and preparing for the real changes that are happening now.
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A Critic of the Evangelical Statement on AI Misunderstands the Issues
On the question of moral responsibility, Dr. Swamidass seems to misunderstand the Statement entirelyRather than lacking insight into AI issues, this band of theologians is especially sagacious in applying theology to them.
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If Social Robots Could Cry, They’d Need Plenty of Tissues For This One
The spate of recent failures of social robot firms prompts a question: Are developers listening to markets?It’s safe to say that most human beings alive today would not want a high level of emotional involvement with a robot.
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The Underwhelming Creativity of AI
The technology regurgitates, it does not createArtists have nothing to fear from AI if, as philosopher of mind Sean Dorrance Kelly says, creativity does not follow computational rules.
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Can AI make us better human beings?
Helping us believe that is a promising new business area for someTo the extent that compassion is a moral choice (that is, not just a manipulation), a key issue is that there is no universal moral machine.
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Scientists’ Definition of Life Excludes AI, but Includes Embryos
A sophisticated AI machine would certainly be worth a lot of money but it has no more moral worth than a broken toasterSpeaking of moral value, the professors’ proposed definition would certainly include the earliest human embryos, their status as “human life” often denied by those who wish to justify their wanton destruction or casual instrumental use as natural resources.
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