Mind Matters Natural and Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis

TagChatGPT

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A digital avatar or artificial intelligence with an Asian female face surrounded by software code in cyberspace. Blurring the line between real world and virtual reality. Generative AI

AI Influencers Are Starting to Explode

Seeing how artificial and impersonal the influencer lifestyle already is, maybe it was inevitable.

AI avatars are starting to flood the social media “influencing” sphere. Seeing how artificial and impersonal the influencer lifestyle already is, maybe it was inevitable. The “Instagram influencer” is a relatively new phenom: an attractive, usually young, person flaunts certain brands on social media for revenue. The phrase “digital creator” is a common tag on bios, and countless young women have made a living off of selling their looks on Instagram. So how might AI play into all this? Well, there are now hundreds of AI internet personalities flooding social media. And they look pretty convincing. Victor Tangermann reports, Thanks to the advent of AI-powered image generators like Stable Diffusion and Midjourney, some are now fabricating entire feeds of internet Read More ›

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Doctor with virtual reality in operation room in hospital.Surgeon analyzing patient heart testing result and human anatomy on technological digital futuristic virtual interface,digital holographic

Can AI Customize and Individualize Healthcare?

Mundie thinks some aspects of biology are too complex for humans. Could AI help?

Craig Mundie says that his dream is to make artificial intelligence one day rival human intellect. While many worry about more dystopian outcomes as result of that, Mundie sees AI as dual use. In his opinion, it can be used for good or ill just like any other technology. Jay Richards interviews Craig Mundie, President of Mundie & Associates and former Microsoft Chief Research Officer about emerging trends in machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI), especially for human systems and healthcare. Craig Mundie: “Well, I think the problem is, you need to model all of human biology. In my opinion, human biology is too complicated for humans. It’s just too complicated. So the question is, is it possible that a Read More ›

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Lazy office worker with feet and socks on table. Useless and relaxing man doing nothing or taking break from work in workstation. Businessman resting during workday. Laziness and relax concept.

ChatGPT: The Perfect Gadget for a Culture in Decline?

ChatGPT is an impersonal machine and can't generate meaning

Dr. Jeffrey Bilbro, professor of English at Grove City College and an editor at The Front Porch Republic, wrote an article for Plough on what he regards as the primary weakness of Large Language Models (LLMs) like ChatGPT. Bilbro comes to the issue from a literary background, which means he values the human element in language as a mode of communication. Literature is a “conversation,” requiring sentient minds. He sees ChatGPT as a soulless mechanism that will atrophy our ability to write and diminish our appreciation for good writing. Bilbro writes, LLMs are a technology suited to a decadent culture, one that chases easy profits rather than tackles the real challenges we face. It’s easier to make money rearranging words Read More ›

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銀河

Of AI and Aliens: Two Philosophers Give Their Thoughts

These sound minds are great resources to draw from in the chaos of our times

Just when you thought our cultural moment couldn’t get any more outlandish, here comes a congressional hearing in which several high-profile individuals claim U.S. intelligence is in possession of “non-human biologics,” a euphemism for “alien stuff.” In a recent YouTube interview, Sean McDowell of Biola University asked philosophers William Lane Craig and J.P. Moreland what they thought of extraterrestrial life and its implications. Craig, a philosopher and theologian, said it would have no bearing on his belief in God’s existence, but emotionally, that it would be remarkably unsettling, and would amount to the greatest discovery in the human history. McDowell pivoted from aliens and addressed the question of artificial intelligence, which Moreland, who specializes in the philosophy of mind, was Read More ›

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AI Writer Chat GPT Computer

Do AI Developers Really Not Know What They’re Making?

A speech-and-language AI researcher counterclaims the doomsdayers

A new article by AI researcher Arlie Coles at American Mind aims to “demystify” artificial intelligence, particularly the claim that AI creators have no idea what they’re creating. Coles says that we understand AI much better than the doomsdayers let on. Part of the reason for AI’s cloudy nature is due to its mathematical complexity, which Coles finds understandable. But that’s no reason not to try and understand what AI is and gauge its benefits and capacities in an accurate light. She writes, We do know what we’re building and how it works, and it’s not too late for us to speak forthrightly about AI so that the general public, not just those with math or computer science Ph.D.s, can Read More ›

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Planet earth from space, zoom in to the middle east, Saudi Arabia, world skyline, globe

Why So Blue? Look at the Progress We’ve Made

Even though there are reasons to celebrate, the mainstream narrative hides them

We’ve cited the groundbreaking book Superabundance several times here at Mind Matters, mainly in connection to its co-author, Gale Pooley, a Senior Fellow of the Discovery Institute’s Center on Wealth & Poverty, and a speaker at the 2021 COSM conference, the yearly technology summit that has attracted speakers like Carver Mead, Peter Thiel, and others. Pooley’s co-author, Marian Tupy, who lectured at COSM 2022 on the book, does work on human progress at the Cato Institute, and published a post showing the many ways humanity has benefitted over the last century. He stands opposed to the mainstream approximations of doom that declare our world’s swift-approaching expiration date, writing, The chance of a person dying in a natural catastrophe — earthquake, Read More ›

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Robotic hand study for object manipulation strategy.

Jay Richards Talks Transhumanism and AI

The underlying philosophy of transhumanism should be rejected

Dr. Jay Richards, a Senior Fellow at Discovery Institute and a friend of the Walter Bradley Center, which publishes Mind Matters, spoke recently at the Acton University conference, discussing both transhumanism and AI. Transhumanists, Richards notes, look at the scope of “cosmic evolution,” see a kind of increasing complexity among the human race, and speculate the next dramatic step: achieving immortality through a mixture of genetic engineering, nanotechnology, and artificial intelligence. Richards described the transhumanist ideology as “anti-human,” but cautioned against having a reactionary response to all new technologies that seem to be involved in transhumanism’s vision, noting that some of them, when analyzed specifically, could have benefits (such as AI). The underlying philosophy of transhumanism, however, should be rejected. Read More ›

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Mission Impossible: A Dead Reckoning With Artificial Intelligence

The villain in the new blockbuster movie is an artificial intelligence known simply as "the entity."

I walked into the theater expecting a typical villain in the latest installment of Mission Impossible starring the inimitable Tom Cruise. And at the film’s beginning, you’re definitely led to believe that the pale, sour-faced Russians are behind yet another espionage program destined to thwart America and conquer the world. But that’s only a front. The real villain in the new blockbuster movie is an artificial intelligence known simply as “the entity.” The impossible mission, tasked to Ethan Hunt (Cruise) is to track down a mysterious key, made of two separate parts, that apparently can unlock the entity and reveal what it’s capable of. God in the Machine Hunt and his usual gang of expatriates find themselves at odds with Read More ›

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Digital chatbots on smartphones access data and information in online networks. Robot Applications and Global Connectivity AI Artificial Intelligence innovation and technology

Musk: My AI Will “Understand Reality”

xAI, Musk's alternative to OpenAI, is shrouded in ambitious hopes

Tech giant and billionaire Elon Musk is starting yet another company, and this one has to do with the talk of the town: artificial intelligence. The name of the venture is “xAI.” It’s been an interesting week in the tech and AI world. Meta released “Threads,” a Twitter alternative, and OpenAI is now under investigation by the Federal Trade Commission, calling the AI company into question for its data scraping methods and ChatGPT’s tendency to spin false information. Now that AI is the apple in ever tech mogul’s eye at the moment, I guess it makes sense that Musk is reaching for the branch of temptation. He’s been teasing his hopes for his own AI company for a few months Read More ›

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Accounting.

OpenAI is Now Under Investigation

The Federal Trade Commission wants to know how OpenAI gets their data and how much harm ChatGPT could have

The Federal Trade Commission (F.T.C.) sent a letter to OpenAI, the San Fransisco company responsible for creating ChatGPT, the Large Language Model that captured the world’s imagination in November of 2022. Per the New York Times, the F.T.C. is investigating the AI company’s methods of data acquisition and also plans on measuring the potential harms of AI on society, citing concerns over false information and job replacement. Cecilia Kang and Cade Metz report: In a 20-page letter sent to the San Francisco company this week, the agency said it was also looking into OpenAI’s security practices. The F.T.C. asked the company dozens of questions in its letter, including how the start-up trains its A.I. models and treats personal data. The Read More ›

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software code in whiteboard

Does ChatGPT Pass the Creativity Test?

What does ChatGPT have to do in order to be considered creative?

What is creativity? Where does it come from? Why are some things humans do considered creative, while other things mundane? Can AI be creative? To answer these questions, let’s come up with a definition. Creativity at least means something new has been done. No work that copies what has come before is considered creative.  A Creativity Criteria Just doing something new is not enough either. If it were, then I can easily be creative by flipping a coin 100 times. That specific sequence of coin flips will only occur once in the entire history of humanity. But no one would say I was creative when I flipped a coin. This means creativity has to generate a new insight. However, these two criteria are not adequate, Read More ›

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Diverse friends in movie theater.

Maybe Hollywood Had it Coming?

When TV production becomes this mechanical and impersonal, why shouldn't studios opt for AI?

The writers’ strike in Hollywood continues. In May, the Writers Guild of America started protesting low wages and the potential threat of artificially generated scripts. Large Language Models (LLMs) have only improved in generating text, raising concerns among writers. However, according to an insightful article from Auguste Meyrat of the Acton Institute, Hollywood has been developing a culture that welcomes AI-generated content with its tendency to pressure writers to fit a formulaic narrative structure instead of encouraging them to pursue real creativity and collaboration. Meyrat writes, All this virtually guarantees the use of AI-generated screenplays. After all, if producing a movie is now effectively the same as producing a widget on an assembly line, the human element can be dispensed Read More ›

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Shaking hands with the future: human and AI collaboration. Man and robot on background of huge data center. Based on Generative AI

Marks: The More Complex the AI, the More It Could Go Wrong

Robert J. Marks's new article discusses how AI's growing complexity makes it harder to regulate

Robert J. Marks, director of the Walter Bradley Center for Natural & Artificial Intelligence, has a brand new article out over at Newsmax on the complexity of artificial intelligence and how, regardless of how many “band-aids” we put on its problematic outputs, it’s impossible to fully regulate a machine with this level of sophistication. Because AI is not a “slave to the truth,” it always needs improvement and correction by its human users. The problem is that we can’t avoid some of the damages until they’re already wrought. Marks writes, The more complex a system, the greater the number of ways it can respond and the more ways it can go wrong. The greater the number of possible responses, the Read More ›

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la hollywood

ChatGPT Isn’t Hollywood’s Only Issue

The deepfakes are only getting more scarily accurate

Deepfakes are a growing threat to acting careers. It’s the other challenge posed by generative AI technologies. In early May, the Writers Guild of America (WGA) began a strike in Hollywood opposing both low wages and the intrusion of generative AI like ChatGPT, which critics purport will be used to replace human writers. The strike illustrates the current threat to the Hollywood writing industry, but the looming deepfake apocalypse calls the role of the actual actors into question, too. Tom Hanks jokingly noted that long after he’s gone, AI-generated versions of him will star in films far into the future. Maybe his remarks weren’t so comical after all. While deepfakes, upon close inspection, can be identified, they appear to be Read More ›

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surreal This futuristic new york city is a hub of technological innovation with holographic advertisements robots highspeed trains flying cars and personal drones It is a melting pot of cultures and

Simulating Human Connection with Meta’s “Allie” Chatbot

I can't help but wonder if people will increasingly use chatbots as paltry substitutes for genuine human connection

To anyone who’s been watching and considering the outcomes of the chatbot revolution, virtual sex has seemed all but inevitable. Meta’s AI chatbot LLaMA, which was controversially made open to the public earlier this year, is now being used to generate sex bots. Washington Post reported on the trend, with Pranshu Verma and Will Oremus writing, Allie is an 18-year old with long brown hair who boasts “tons of sexual experience.” Because she“lives for attention,” she’ll “share details of her escapades”with anyone for free. But Allie is fake, an artificial intelligence chatbot created for sexual play — which sometimes carries out graphic rape and abuse fantasies. -Pranshu Verma and Will Oremus, Meta’s new AI is being used to create sex chatbots – The Washington Read More ›

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Young handsome man with beard wearing casual sweater and glasses over blue background very happy and excited doing winner gesture with arms raised, smiling and screaming for success. Celebration

AI Can Do It All So You Don’t Have To

Sometimes satire says it best

Satire is often best at uncovering uncomfortable truths. Much of the talk around AI progress celebrates its ability to make certain tasks way easier, such as writing essays, programming computer code, or firing your employees. While that is certainly true, the concern remains that if we depend on AI like this for long enough we might just forget how to put two and two together and write a sentence over ten words long. That’s probably cynical, but the principle is there – depending on technology to perform mental tasks will lessen the ability to independently perform those same mental tasks. The popular satire site The Onion published a paragraph about a hypothetical man who is delighted about AI because it Read More ›

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Un robot IA traite le courrier

Don’t Tell Google Bard Your Secrets

Executives are warning employees of potential privacy leaks

Google’s parent company, Alphabet Inc., advised its employees not to share personal information with the chatbot “Bard,” noting that doing so could lead to privacy leaks, which has reportedly already happened at Samsung. Kevin Hurler reports, Four sources close to the matter told Reuters that the massive tech giant has advised employees not to enter confidential information into chatbots like OpenAI’s ChatGPT or Google’s own Bard over fears of leaks. Alphabet is reportedly concerned with employees inputting sensitive information into these chatbots since human reviewers may sit on the other end reviewing chat entries. These chatbots may also use previous entries to train themselves, posing another risk of a leak. That risk is warranted, as Samsung confirmed last month that its own internal Read More ›

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Yosemite Firefall

John Muir and the Pleasures of Nature

The inventor-turned-naturalist can teach us the benefits of loving the natural world

April 21 is John Muir’s birthday. Muir is typically remembered as one of America’s foremost naturalists, father of our national parks and a tireless defender of the wilderness. But he might very well have been none of those things. As a young man, Muir was gifted at building machines, and he was set to pursue a career in technology until everything went dark. Literally. Revisiting this little-known chapter of Muir’s life can inspire us to better navigate our own relationship to technology and give us a fresh reason to celebrate his work. In 1849, Muir left his homeland of Scotland and moved with his family to the backwoods of Wisconsin. Farm work, chores, and family Bible studies kept him busy Read More ›

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AI related law concept shown by robot hand using lawyer working tools in lawyers office with legal astute icons depicting artificial intelligence law . GEnerative IA

Can Lawyer Robots Solve Complex Legal Cases?

A lawyer recently used ChatGPT in a court case, but it generated false citations. Can AI be trusted at all in the courtroom? Lawyer Richard Stevens explains how in legal cases, meaning, context, and nuance are essential, and can’t be “computed” by artificial intelligence.  Additional Resources

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Artificial intelligence, robot thinking about world, looking at the city. Futuristic concept.

Can AI Create its Own Information?

The simple answer is "no," but why? Eric Holloway explains

AI is amazing. It is all the rage these days. Companies everywhere are jumping on the AI bandwagon. No one wants to be left behind when true believers are raptured to the mainframe in the sky. What makes the AI work? The AI works because of information it gained from a human generated dataset. Let’s label the dataset D. We can measure the information in the dataset with Shannon entropy. Represent the information with H(D). When we train an AI with this data, we are applying a mathematical function to the dataset. This function is the training algorithm. Labelling the training algorithm T, then we represent training as T(D). The outcome of training is a new AI model. The model generates new data. We Read More ›