Computers are not conscious simply because they are programmed to make decisions; plants are likely in the same position.
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On this bingecast archive episode of Mind Matters News, guest host Pat Flynn welcomes Dr. Winston Ewert to the show to discuss Ewert’s chapter in the volume Minding the Brain.
In his contribution, titled “The Human Mind’s Sophisticated Algorithm and Its Implications,” Dr. Ewert argues that the human mind’s problem-solving cognition can be modeled as a sophisticated algorithm. Ewert explains that any cognitive task can be expressed as a version of the halting problem from computer science, where an algorithm either halts or continues infinitely. He suggests that humans are able to solve a large and sophisticated subset of these problems, but are limited in the same way that no algorithm can solve all halting problems. Ewert contends that this algorithmic view of human cognition has implications that challenge reductive materialist and neo-Darwinian views, despite resistance from some thinkers who believe human abilities transcend any algorithm.
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If computers and AI took over the world, would we even notice? Today, host Robert J. Marks ponders this question as he continues his conversation with Dr. Donald Wunsch about his experiences with AI and his recent article in the IEEE Computational Intelligence Magazine on artificial general intelligence. In Part 4 of the discussion, Dr. Wunsch argues that computers have Read More ›
On this episode of Mind Matters News, guest host Pat Flynn concludes a conversation with Dr. Winston Ewert about his contribution to the recent volume Minding the Brain. This segment explores the implications of the view that human cognition can be reduced to a sophisticated algorithm, as Ewert argues. Ewert contends that an algorithm can only construct an algorithm less sophisticated than Read More ›
It’s one of the hot topic questions and will almost certainly continue to be. Are Large Language Models like ChatGPT capable of legitimate thought? And what counts as “thinking”? Is there a quality to the concept that makes it distinctly human, or are the tech futurists right? Can AI computation be considered a type of cognitive activity? Stephen Wolfram, George Gilder, and Bob Metcalfe spoke on the possibilities and limits of AI at last year’s star-studded COSM conference. We are experiencing watershed moments in technology, with lots of hype to go along with it, but are we putting the cart before the horse in some cases? Discover more in this special recording on YouTube.
Sleep deprivation and sleep interruptions such as occur with sleep apnea are not mere annoyances but actually damage a whole array of functions.
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Many online creators and entrepreneurs give sensitive data to TikTok, the China-owned social media app, so they can do business on the platform. That includes social security numbers. TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew told Congress earlier this year that users’ data was stored outside of China in places such as Virginia and Singapore. Apparently, however, that is an inaccurate claim. According to a report from Forbes, TikTok has indeed been storing sensitive data on Chinese servers, where employees there can access it. Alexandra S. Levine reports, A trove of records obtained by Forbes from multiple sources across different parts of the company reveals that highly sensitive financial and personal information about those prized users and third parties has been stored in China. Read More ›
Computer scientist and AI expert Selmer Bringsjord provides a wide-ranging discussion of artificial intelligence (AI) and its capabilities. Bringsjord, a professor at Rensselaer, addresses three features humans possess that AI machines won’t be able to duplicate in his view: consciousness, cognition, and genuine creativity. Additional Resources
When trying to solve a problem, a recent study showed that it is much easier for us to add things than to subtract them: In a new paper featured on the cover of Nature, University of Virginia researchers explain why people rarely look at a situation, object or idea that needs improving — in all kinds of contexts — and think to remove something as a solution. Instead, we almost always add some element, whether it helps or not. Jennifer McManamay/University of Virginia School of Engineering and Applied Science, “Why our brains miss opportunities to improve through subtraction” at ScienceDaily The paper is closed access. In a sense, we all know this. When we want to make something look better, Read More ›
In a recent study of 11–12 month olds published in Cognition, researchers found that infants on the verge of saying single words themselves can already process complete sentences such as “Clap your hands.” The research sheds light on the difficulties adults have learning second languages if they focus too intensely on single words: Dr Barbora Skarabela, of the School of Philosophy, Psychology and Languages Sciences, said: “Previous research has shown that young infants recognise many common words. But this is the first study that shows that infants extract and store more than just single words from everyday speech. This suggests that when children learn language, they build on linguistic units of varying sizes, including multiword sequences, and not just single Read More ›
This year saw a huge uproar in science media over claims that prominent researcher of spider behavior Jonathan Pruitt, a behavioral ecologist currently at McMaster University in Canada, had fabricated evidence of complex, seemingly intelligent behavior in spiders. After many colleagues recently raised concerns in blogs and tweets that behavioral ecologist Jonathan Pruitt had fabricated the data behind a slew of provocative results regarding animal personalities and social spiders, he denied the charges, saying any problems were inadvertent mistakes. Elizabeth Pennisi, “Embattled spider biologist seeks to delay additional retractions of problematic papers” at Science (March 12, 2020) Some of Pruitt’s data management mistakes seem rather curious: More than 20 scientists — co-authors, peers and other interested observers in the field Read More ›
Computer scientist Selmer Bringsjord recalls, “I remember asking James Moor, the Dartmouth professor who’s written quite a bit on AI: “You know. Jim, you really are a true believer in this stuff but can you tell me how much time you’re willing to give these AI people? I mean, if we give them another thousand years, and we still don’t have cognition as I’ve characterized it… Are you going to be skeptical now?” He was, I suppose, as an academic, predictably clever and evasive, but the bottom line is, we don’t have this cognition captured.
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There are some who say immortality is available if we can upload our minds to a computer. This presupposes our minds are computable and can be duplicated by a computer. Are our minds computable? Robert J. Marks and Dr. Selmer Bringsjord discuss consciousness, cognition, and artificial intelligence. Show Notes 00:39 | Introducing Selmer Bringsjord, Professor — Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) Read More ›
There is growing evidence that many comatose patients are quite aware of what is going on around them. For example, nurses are often very careful not to say upsetting things that the patient can hear because blood pressure often rises dramatically, even in deeply “unaware” comatose patients.
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