Fear 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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Rather than lacking insight into AI issues, this band of theologians is especially sagacious in applying theology to them.
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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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Artists 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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To 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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Speaking 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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Edward Lorenz discovered that certain systems—notably those in which we live and move, such as weather, economies, and traffic—are inherently unpredictable.
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Software engineers call imaginary products “vaporware.” And if the tag fits, it wouldn’t be the first time that Tesla has marketed an illusion.
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Hype serves no one other than the early investors hoping to get their cash back. Calm evaluations—and an appreciation for the amazing beings that humans are—would serve all of us much better than overpromised claims that are doomed to under deliver.
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Architects of Intelligence: The truth about AI from the people building it (2018) compiled by futurist Martin Ford (23 experts) and Possible Minds: Twenty-Five Ways of Looking at AI (2019), compiled by John Brockman (25 experts) offer a total of 45 experts foretelling our future. Some experts, Rodney Brooks (Rethink Robotics), Judea Pearl (UCLA), and Stuart Russell (UC Berkeley), were interviewed for both books, which is why the number sums to 45, not 48. The major disagreements among contributors to both Architects of Intelligence and Possible Minds (2019) are the classic ones: Whether AI will have human-like intelligence and/or wipe us out. And yet, as a reviewer of both books notes, Almost everyone agrees that certain questions — when general Read More ›
Future apocalypses offer a hidden benefit: Whether they ever happen or not, they distract us from critical thinking about present-day issues.
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What if human-like AI turns out to be impossible because reasoning is not calculation and calculators do not reason?
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If China becomes the dominant world power through total control, David Mattin argues, it will erode the Western world’s governing myth that liberal democracy is the best system.
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Philosopher Ed Feser wrote a great post recently on why it is irrational to believe that artificial intelligence is really intelligent. He begins with Arthur C. Clarke’s famous observation that “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” Clarke’s assertion, he points out, can be taken two ways: people can be fooled into thinking that advanced technology is magic and, as a metaphysical assertion, that advanced technology really is magic. He defends the first assertion and, of course, denies the second: There are, however, many people who believe a claim that is analogous to, and as silly as, the metaphysical thesis that sufficiently advanced technology really is magic — namely the claim that a machine running a sufficiently advanced computer Read More ›
The simmering controversy sometimes explodes into serious charges. For example, The Department of Housing and Urban Development has launched a Fair Housing Act complaint against Facebook for targeting customers in a way that may constitute discrimination.
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Even if robots can be engineered to fold laundry, the question of whether they threaten jobs, as a result, is more complex.
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If the surveillance technology developed for China catches on in the West, however numberless the Googlers' infinite parallel universes may be, Americans will be constantly and closely observed while sitting behind on the beach.
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Self-driving car entrepreneur Elon Musk is nothing, if not ambitious. Earlier this week, he promised to have a million robot taxis on the road by next year, taking dead aim at Uber and Lyft. But responses have changed in recent years from Wow! To “Oh. Really?”
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It’s not so much that electronic systems make errors as that they make errors that health care staff can’t anticipate and correct for—errors that occur in complex machinery, not errors made by experienced professionals.
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Too much of the debate over AI is dictated by prior metaphysical commitments that are rarely examined. This Evangelical Statement is a welcome contrast because it makes the theological issues explicit.
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