Mind Matters Natural and Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis

TagArtificial Intelligence

robotic arm in court
Digital Law Technology
Type
post
Richard W. Stevens
Date
April 12, 2023
Categorized
Artificial Intelligence
Tagged

Can Professor Turley Sue ChatGPT for Libel?

The world wide web of reputation destruction is here
Richard W. Stevens
April 12, 2023
7
Artificial Intelligence

Isn’t there a law against falsely accusing people of serious crimes or misconduct and then publishing damaging lies to the world? Yes. For centuries in English-speaking countries, the victim of such lies could sue the false accuser in civil court for libel per se. Nowadays, libel and its oral statement cousin, slander, are grouped together as defamation. Under American law, it isn’t easy to bring and win a lawsuit even when your case seems strong, but at least the law provides some recourse for defamation. How about when the false accuser is ChatGPT? Jonathan Turley, the nationally known George Washington University law professor and commentator, woke up one morning to discover: ChatGPT falsely reported on a claim of sexual harassment that was never made Read More ›

futuristic window
A room with round glass window overlooking beautiful landscape background . Hotel futuristic showroom with modern interior . Sublime Generative AI image .
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post
Wesley J. Smith
Date
April 10, 2023
Categorized
Transhumanism
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Transhumanism’s Vain Search for Immortality

Transhumanism promotes its own defeat-of-death eschatology
Wesley J. Smith
April 10, 2023
2
Transhumanism

April 9th was Easter Sunday for the Western churches. Next Sunday, for Eastern Orthodox churches. For believing Christians, whether Eastern or Western, celebrating Christ’s Resurrection joyfully commemorates the permanent defeat of death and entrance into eternal life. Transhumanism, which is a quasi-religion that worships at the altar of technology, promotes its own defeat-of-death eschatology. Instead of the New Jerusalem for which Christians yearn, transhumanists hope to live indefinitely — if not forever — in the corporeal world through the wonders of AI and other human-invented methods of technologically defeating death. And it could be here by 2050! From the Daily Mail story: Despite the setback, that same year, a prominent futurist predicted that ‘electronic immortality’ would be available to humans by 2050. Dr Read More ›

old timey movie pic
ON THE BIG SCREEN
Type
post
Peter Biles
Date
April 6, 2023
Categorized
Artificial Intelligence, Arts & Culture
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Future Films: Written and Directed by…AI?

AI's abilities in visual creation are remarkably good and are getting better fast
Peter Biles
April 6, 2023
4
Artificial Intelligence, Arts & Culture

Artificial intelligence is exploding right now. From ChatGPT to Google’s Bard to DALL-E, these new technologies are forcing the question about the place of human agency in a technological society. That includes the world of cinema. Here’s a Scenario Here’s a cheery scenario: you drop by the local Barnes & Noble before seeing the seventeenth iteration of Spider-Man in theaters. The year is 2040. You buy a hot new bestseller written by a chatbot and are impressed by the linguistic originality, even though the novel still follows a pretty crude narrative structure. Then, it’s off to see the show. You’re in the theater with your ticket and popcorn, both of which were given to you by a non-sentient robotic arm Read More ›

Daft Punk headset
Illustration of a Futuristic cyber helmet inspired by music group Daft Punk . Cyberspace Augmented Reality. , Generative AI
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post
News
Date
April 6, 2023
Categorized
Artificial Intelligence, Arts & Culture
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Daft Punk and Being Human After All

Former member said AI concerns contributed in part to the band's breakup
News
April 6, 2023
2
Artificial Intelligence, Arts & Culture

Legendary electronic pop duo Daft Punk split ways two years ago after decades of collaboration and are esteemed as pioneers in the creative ways they infused their music with cutting edge sonic technology. However, in a recent interview, ex-member Thomas Bangalter said that artificial intelligence contributed in part to the band’s separation. Per a report from Futurism, Bangalter said, We tried to use these machines to express something extremely moving that a machine cannot feel, but a human can. We were always on the side of humanity and not on the side of technology. -NOOR AL-SIBAI, Daft Punk Says They Broke Up Partially Over Fear of AI (futurism.com) The pop duo notoriously dressed up in robotic garb during their musical Read More ›

person-talking-with-robotic-aifuturistic-technology-or-machine-learning-conceptsgenerative-ai-technology-stockpack-adobe-stock
person talking with robotic ai.futuristic technology or machine learning concepts.Generative ai technology
Type
podcast
Jeffery Funk and Robert J. Marks
Date
April 6, 2023
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The Value and Drawbacks of ChatGPT

Jeffery Funk and Robert J. Marks
April 6, 2023
1

In this week’s episode, Robert Marks resumes his conversation with tech consultant and expert Jeffrey Funk. They focus on ChatGPT, its value and limits, and the hype that often accompanies new developments in AI. Additional Resources

finding a solution in the maze
Businessman in creative blue maze background.
Type
post
Peter Biles
Date
April 5, 2023
Categorized
Artificial Intelligence
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AI is a Tool, Not a Solution for Everything

Life is complicated and our problems can't always be solved through an engineering approach
Peter Biles
April 5, 2023
4
Artificial Intelligence

AI is a tool. In the words of Robert J. Marks from an interview at last year’s COSM conference, it can’t be a “friend or foe,” because it’s not a living entity. It’s something that can be used (or abused). Such a neutral, balanced attitude toward AI is alien to many Big Tech moguls who are pitching AI as the solution to many of the world’s complicated problems. For them, on the flipside of the doomsday alarmists, AI will usher in a new epoch of human progress. They may be partially right about that, but according to this writer at Slate, their hype reflects a commitment to technological “solutionism,” the idea that tech, once adequately suited for the task, can Read More ›

library with arches
Custom library
Type
post
Peter Biles
Date
April 4, 2023
Categorized
Artificial Intelligence, Arts & Culture
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From One Author to an AI

What might John Steinbeck think of AI writing a novel?
Peter Biles
April 4, 2023
4
Artificial Intelligence, Arts & Culture

John Steinbeck was among the most prominent literary figures of the twentieth century, responsible for works such as The Grapes of Wrath, East of Eden, and The Pearl. East of Eden, arguably his best work, is a sprawling novel about two families in the Salinas Valley in California and is often interpreted as a modern-day retelling of the book of Genesis, particularly the story of Cain and Abel. If we were to ask Steinbeck today about AI’s ability to write a good novel, what might the celebrated writer say? Well, an interview with Steinbeck from Paris Review, while it doesn’t have anything to do with computers or artificial intelligence, does reveal a significant aspect of Steinbeck’s own philosophy of writing Read More ›

the scales of justice
Scales of Justice in the dark Court Hall. Law concept of Judiciary, Jurisprudence and Justice. Copy space. Based on Generative AI
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post
Richard W. Stevens
Date
April 3, 2023
Categorized
Artificial Intelligence
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AI in the Courtroom: How to Program a Hot Mess

Could AI make competent judicial choices in the court?
Richard W. Stevens
April 3, 2023
7
Artificial Intelligence

Imagine we’re assigned to design the artificial intelligence (AI) software to carry out legal analysis of cases like a human judge. Our project is “CourtGPT,” a system that receives a factual and legal problem in a case where there are two opposing parties, analyzes how certain statutes and other legal principles apply to the facts, and delivers a decision in favor of one of the parties. CourtGPT will make “legal decisions,” not decide “jury questions of fact,” and thus will function like a judge (not juror). To write a computer program of any complexity, we start by describing the entire program’s operations in English (my native tongue). Pro tip: If you cannot describe how your program operates in human language, then you cannot Read More ›

writing text in floating boxes
Businessman showing online document validation icon, Concepts of practices and policies, company articles of association Terms and Conditions, regulations and legal advice, corporate policy
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post
Eric Holloway
Date
April 3, 2023
Categorized
Artificial Intelligence
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AI and Human Text: Indistinct?

Here's a mathematical proof that challenges the assumption that AI and human-made text are the same
Eric Holloway
April 3, 2023
4
Artificial Intelligence

What is a poor teacher to do? With AI everywhere, how can he reliably detect when his students are having ChatGPT write their papers for them? To address this concern, a number of AI text detector tools have emerged.  But do they work? A recent paper claims that AI generated text is ultimately indistinguishable from human generated text. They illustrate their claim with a couple experiments that fool AI text detectors by simple variations to AI generated text. Then, the authors go on to mathematically prove their big claim that it is ultimately impossible to tell AI text and human text apart. However, the authors make a crucial assumption. Faulty Premises The proof assumes that AI generated text will become closer and closer to Read More ›

close-up-of-calculation-table-printed-in-an-old-book-stockpack-adobe-stock
close up of calculation table, printed in an old book
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post
Gary Smith
Date
March 31, 2023
Categorized
Mathematics
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An Illusion of Emergence, Part 2

A figure can tell a story but, intentionally or unintentionally, the story that is told may be fiction
Gary Smith
March 31, 2023
5
Mathematics

I recently wrote about how graphs that use logarithms on the horizontal axis can create a misleading impression of the relationship between two variables. The specific example I used was the claim made in a recent paper (with 16 coauthors from Google, Stanford, UNC Chapel Hill, and DeepMind) that scaling up the number of parameters in large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT can cause “emergence,” which they define as qualitative changes in abilities that are not present in smaller-scale models but are present in large-scale models; thus they cannot be predicted by simply extrapolating the performance improvements on smaller-scale models. They present several graphs similar to this one that seem to show emergence: However, their graphs have the logarithms of Read More ›

self driving car
Self driving car on a road. Autonomous vehicle. Inside view.
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post
News
Date
March 31, 2023
Categorized
Artificial Intelligence
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The Irony in Musk’s AI Distrust

As a leader in AI, why is Musk advocating a pause on its development?
News
March 31, 2023
2
Artificial Intelligence

Elon Musk joined a petition to “pause” AI research, citing concern over its potential harms and overreach. This is interesting, since Musk originally funded OpenAI, which is now at the forefront of cutting-edge AI systems like ChatGPT. In addition, Musk’s ventures with self-driving cars and his confidence in neural technology all cast him as a leader in the AI revolution. So why is he calling for a hiatus? According to a recent Slate article, the warnings against Large Language Models (LLMs) are a distraction from the more dangerous AI inventions like the self-driving car. Musk uses sci-fi alarmism to exacerbate the fear of a machine takeover, while his own experiments in automation have also proved to be dangerous for human Read More ›

concept-of-robots-replacing-humans-in-offices-stockpack-adobe-stock
Concept of robots replacing humans in offices
Type
podcast
Andrew McDiarmid and Robert J. Marks
Date
March 30, 2023
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Navigating the Technological Age

Andrew McDiarmid and Robert J. Marks
March 30, 2023
1

Humans have created technology for centuries. But what happens when we stop using tech and tech starts using us? In this episode, Discovery Institute Senior Fellow Andrew McDiarmid sits down with Robert J. Marks to talk about the root meaning of technology, how it has developed, and the ways we can healthily navigate our highly technologized world. Additional Resources

Elon_Musk_at_a_Press_Conference
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post
News
Date
March 30, 2023
Categorized
Artificial Intelligence
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Elon Musk to AI Labs: Press Pause

The petition reflects growing concern over the proper role of AI in human society and its potential for overreach
News
March 30, 2023
2
Artificial Intelligence

Over 1,000 leaders and experts in technology and science, including Elon Musk, are now urging artificial intelligence labs to pause their research and distribution of new AI technologies. They believe moving forward so swiftly on AI research could bring about unintended consequences in the future, and that we don’t understand AI well enough yet to be casting so much trust in it. According to The New York Times, The open letter called for a pause in the development of A.I. systems more powerful than GPT-4, the chatbot introduced this month by the research lab OpenAI, which Mr. Musk co-founded. The pause would provide time to introduce “shared safety protocols” for A.I. systems, the letter said. “If such a pause cannot be Read More ›

nanobot
Cell repairing nanobot technology, illustration
Type
post
News
Date
March 29, 2023
Categorized
Transhumanism
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Pre-order Immortality Now (It’s Only 8 Years Away, Apparently)

A Google engineer predicts the "singularity" is coming and that we should get on board
News
March 29, 2023
3
Transhumanism

Ray Kurzweil, a former Google engineer, thinks that humanity is a mere “eight years away” from achieving immortality. No, he’s not a spiritual leader predicting the eschaton. He’s not telling you to seek union with God and achieve immortality the old-fashioned way. He thinks we’ll be able to live forever via age-reversing “nanobots.” These “tiny robots” will correct damaged cells and make us immune to disease, thus leading to radically increased human longevity. Stacy Liberatore writes at Daily Mail, Now the former Google engineer believes technology is set to become so powerful it will help humans live forever, in what is known as the singularity. Singularity is a theoretical point when artificial intelligence surpasses human intelligence and changes the path Read More ›

chalk graph
businessman hand writing a business graph on a touch screen inte
Type
post
Gary Smith
Date
March 27, 2023
Categorized
Artificial Intelligence
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A Graph Can Tell a Story—Sometimes It’s an Illusion

Mistakes, chicanery, and "chartjunk" can undermine the usefulness of graphs
Gary Smith
March 27, 2023
5
Artificial Intelligence

A picture is said to be worth a thousand words. A graph can be worth a thousand numbers. Graphs are, as Edward Tufte titled his wonderful book, the “visual display of quantitative information.” Graphs should assist our understanding of the data we are using. Graphs can help us identify tendencies, patterns, trends, and relationships. They should display data accurately and encourage viewers to think about the data rather than admire the artwork. Unfortunately, graphs are sometimes marred (intentionally or unintentionally) by a variety of misleading techniques or by what Tufte calls “chartjunk” that obscures rather than illuminates. I have described elsewhere many ways in which mistakes, chicanery, and chartjunk can undermine the usefulness of graphs. I recently saw a novel Read More ›

hiking
Hiking team people helping each other friend giving a helping hand while climbing up on the mountain rock adventure travel concept of friendship support trust teamwork success.
Type
post
Peter Biles
Date
March 24, 2023
Categorized
Artificial Intelligence
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GPT-4: Signs of Human-Level Intelligence?

Competence and understanding matter just as much if not more than mere "intelligence"
Peter Biles
March 24, 2023
3
Artificial Intelligence

You’ve heard about GPT-3, but how about GPT-4? OpenAI has publicly released the new AI program, and researchers have already claimed that it shows “sparks” of human intelligence, or artificial general intelligence (AGI). Maggie Harrison writes at Futurism, Emphasis on the “sparks.” The researchers are careful in the paper to characterize GPT-4’s prowess as “only a first step towards a series of increasingly generally intelligent systems” rather than fully-hatched, human-level AI. They also repeatedly highlighted the fact that this paper is based on an “early version” of GPT-4, which they studied while it was “still in active development by OpenAI,” and not necessarily the version that’s been wrangled into product-applicable formation. -Maggie Harrison, Microsoft Researchers Claim GPT-4 Is Showing “Sparks” Read More ›

bard the bot
Artificial intelligence ai chat bot idea hands holding a phone against a blurred abstract background chatbot providing website support. Generative AI
Type
post
News
Date
March 24, 2023
Categorized
Artificial Intelligence
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The Bard is Beginning to Sing

Google has unleashed its own bot. Does that mean they're in the running in the AI race now?
News
March 24, 2023
2
Artificial Intelligence

Google has officially made its AI chatbot “Bard” available in the United States and the UK, notching their place in the artificial intelligence “arms race” that has taken the tech world by storm since OpenAI released its GPT-3 program last November. Microsoft released its own bot just a few weeks ago, though it immediately heralded concern for its unpredictable mannerisms and even “creepy” behavior, as described by Kevin Roose from The New York Times. “Google’s had a rocky AI journey after being caught out by the runaway success of OpenAI’s ChatGPT chatbot,” write a team of contributors at Forbes. This all begs the question: is Google really prepared to be a leader in this field? It may be a forefather Read More ›

observing the data
In the System Control Room Technical Operator Stands and Monitors Various Activities Showing on Multiple Displays with Graphics. Administrator Monitors Work of Artificial Intelligence.
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post
News
Date
March 23, 2023
Categorized
Artificial Intelligence
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Gary Smith’s New Book Reviewed in Washington Post

Smith argues that science itself is being undermined by the tools scientists use
News
March 23, 2023
3
Artificial Intelligence

Walter Bradley Center Senior Fellow Gary Smith’s book Distrust: Big Data, Data-Torturing, and the Assault on Science was reviewed in The Washington Post today. Smith is a frequent contributor to Mind Matters and teaches economics at Pomona College. In his new book, Smith argues that science itself is being “undermined” by the tools scientists use. Reviewer Abby Ohlheister writes, Smith, an economist whose work often examines the misuse of data and statistics in a variety of disciplines, argues that the current crisis of trust in science falls at the intersection of three forces: disinformation, data torturing and data mining. Disinformation, as Smith writes, is “as old as the human race,” but accelerated in speed and reach alongside social media. Data Read More ›

COSM2022-Nov10-174A0113-blake-lemoine-panel
Type
post
News
Date
March 23, 2023
Categorized
Artificial Intelligence
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Lemoine at COSM 2022: A Conversation on AI and LaMDA

Will AI ever become "sentient"?
News
March 23, 2023
1
Artificial Intelligence

Blake Lemoine, ex-Google employee and AI expert, sat down with Discovery Institute’s Jay Richards at the 2022 COSM conference last November. Together they discussed AI, Google, and how and why Lemoine got to where he is today. Lemoine famously claimed last year that LaMDA, Google’s breakthrough AI technology, had achieved sentience. Lemoine explains that many people at Google thought AI had the potential for sentience, but that such technology should not be made prematurely for fear of the negative impacts it could have on society. You can listen to their interesting and brief conversation in the video below, and be sure to see more sessions from the 2022 COSM conference featuring Lemoine and other leaders and innovators in technology on Read More ›

bulb brain
Creative Idea with Brain and Light Bulb Illustration, with Generative AI Technology
Type
post
News
Date
March 21, 2023
Categorized
Artificial Intelligence
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Dear Silicon Valley: You’re Over-Hyping ChatGPT

The abilities of these new chatbots are grossly overstated
News
March 21, 2023
2
Artificial Intelligence

Gary Smith and Jeffrey Funk, frequent Mind Matters contributors, co-wrote a piece at Salon on the over-exaggerated dreams big tech has for AI. They write, Silicon Valley’s pre-eminent leaders love prematurely predicting that their products will completely upend the world as we know it. The latest case study comes from Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, the company behind the ChatGPT AI chatbot that has gone viral for its convincing imitations of human writing. Two years ago, Altman wrote a manifesto, “Moore’s Law for Everything,” in which he forecast that artificial intelligence would make huge swaths of both white collar and blue collar jobs obsolete. -Smith & Funk, Don’t believe the hype: why ChatGPT is not the “holy grail” of AI research | Read More ›