Haidt: Beauty and Awe Help Us Escape the Phone-Based Life
The question is: why are we drawn to beauty?I want the beauty of the forest to actually be beautiful, not just signal a primordial drive to forage and hunt.
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Live Music is Making a Comeback, and So is Bob Dylan
People still want to experience music in person.This past summer, 110,000 people convened for a George Strait concert in College Station, TX, the biggest crowd ever recorded to hear live music. Taylor Swift’s “Eras Tour” has amassed over a billion dollars in revenue, with the pop star traveling the world to sold-out amphitheaters. Coldplay, another massive musical act, is gearing up for the release of their tenth studio album, Moon Music, set to drop on October 4th. They plan a world tour for the album and are also known to fill up stadiums far and wide. So, whatever plights the world of arts and culture might be facing, and given AI’s incursion into the creator economy, one thing remains evident: people still want to experience music in Read More ›
A Weekend Watch: Paul Kingsnorth and Louise Perry
Who is technology serving?What do we lose when we’re never quiet with our own thoughts, always checking our phones, always listening to Spotify or a podcast in the background?
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AI: The Future of Friendship?
Odd visions of dystopia keep popping up in real life in our current social moment.Odd visions of dystopia keep popping up in real life in our current social moment. An upcoming device simply called “friend” is now being advertised. Per the product description, the “friend” is a Bluetooth disk that hangs around a person’s neck and “listens” to the user. It then has the capacity to make conversation by “texting” you at random times of the day, like a human friend might do. The website includes a “frequently asked questions” portion, which is where you can discover what the product is and what it can do. Here’s a bizarre response to the question: “what does ‘always listening’ mean”: When connected via bluetooth, your friend is always listening and forming their own internal thoughts. We Read More ›
Caring for the Deeply Forgetful: An Interview with Dr. Stephen Post
How can we best compassionately relate to those suffering from Alzheimer’s disease? Is there more to the mind than just the brain? On this episode of Mind Matters News, neurosurgeon Dr. Michael Egnor interviews Dr. Stephen Post. They discuss topics such as memory, consciousness, medical ethics, and the care of individuals with Alzheimer’s disease. Dr. Post emphasizes the importance of Read More ›
Robert Marks & Zoltan Istvan Debate AI and Transhumanism
Are we on the verge of an era of incalculable human progress because of the power of AI, or are we threatened with being made obsolete and perhaps extinguished in an age of intelligent machines? In this episode, Robert J. Marks and author Zoltan Istvan debate secular transhumanism and artificial intelligence (AI). Marks argues that AI can never be creative Read More ›
AI and Common Sense
Large Language Models and paraprosdokian one-linersAn LLM will never write a joke that gives another LLM a good honest belly laugh.
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Finding Common Ground: Exploring Near-Death Experiences and Beyond
The study of NDEs opens up profound questions about the nature of consciousness and the afterlifeAnd then there’s this whole mess of determinism — whether it’s naturalistic determinism, divine determinism, or even randomness.
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Dembski: Information is the Basic Stuff of Reality
It's information all the way down, says mathematician and philosopher William DembskiIf information, not matter, is the basic stuff of reality, how would this change the way we look at the world? On a classic episode of ID the Future, Center for Science and Culture Managing Director John West sits down with mathematician and philosopher William Dembski to discuss his 2014 book Being as Communion: A Metaphysics of Information. Building on his previous books making a case for intelligent design, Being as Communion presents a metaphysical framework for an informational world that can accommodate intelligent design. One of Dembski’s key arguments is that matter isn’t the fundamental unit of reality. “Everything that we call matter reveals itself through patterns, through information,” says Dr. Dembski. To get to the heart of the matter, we must look Read More ›
Does ChatGPT Think?
Are Large Language Models like ChatGPT capable of legitimate thought?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.
No, Chatbots Are Not Conscious
The arguments in favor of computer consciousness remain weakIn the midst of all the chatter surrounding AI and chatbots, one might be led to believe that the concepts of consciousness or even the soul, let alone the afterlife, are simply relics of outdated beliefs. This sentiment is often echoed by some scientists, raising the question: Is this truly the case? And should we readily accept this perspective? In a recent episode of Mindscape, renowned philosopher and cognitive scientist Raphael Millerie, who boasts an Oxford education and is now a fellow at the Center of Science and Society, teamed up with Sean Carroll, a prominent theoretical physicist known for debunking notions of the soul and the afterlife, to delve into the world of chatbots and AI (see episode 230). Read More ›
The New Tower of Babel
The old ways of arguing and understanding each other are on the decline, if not on life support.We all know Babel (no, not the language learning company). It’s in Genesis. The Biblical story about God making so many languages and dialects and (let’s add) opinions that no one could understand each other or effectively communicate. One legacy of the triumph of digital technology and AI in every corner of our existence is that we’ve recreated this Babel. Let me try to unpack this, and bear with me if it seems I’m saying something derogatory about one belief or another — my aim is to avoid that game and try to explain the mechanism, the social and cultural story, by which our new Babel is ascendant, and the old ways of arguing and understanding each other are on Read More ›
Robert J. Marks Discusses Artificial Intelligence in D.C.
Marks is making the rounds talking about AI and his new book.Marks’ views on AI are valuable contributions to the current discourse on the topic, so it’s wonderful his book is making a splash with some big names.
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Could Consciousness Have Evolved?
Michael Egnor takes a hard look at the evidence in this classic podcast episode.On a classic episode of ID the Future, neurosurgeon Michael Egnor interviews Bernardo Kastrup, a philosopher with a background in computer engineering, about consciousness, evolution, and intelligent design. Did consciousness evolve? What does the evidence suggest? And how do materialists deal with the seemingly immaterial reality that is consciousness? Enjoy this guest episode from Mind Matters, a podcast of Discovery Institute’s Walter Bradley Center for Natural and Artificial Intelligence. Dig Deeper Cross-posted at Evolution News.
Meta AI Scientist: AGI is a Pipe Dream
Human intelligence still can't be matched by a soulless algorithmPredictions on AI’s ever-developing complexity have tech optimists counting the days until the machine replaces the human mind. Artificial general intelligence is the term they use to describe the point in which AI will officially overtake human intelligence. However, certain experts in the field, among them Robert J. Marks, host of the Mind Matters podcast, protest the assumption. AI researcher and scientist Yann LeCun, the AI chief at Meta, said recently that the current AI systems are nowhere close to achieving human-like intelligence. LeCun said, “We’re easily fooled into thinking they are intelligent because of their fluency with language, but really, their understanding of reality is very superficial,” he said. “They’re useful, there’s no question about that. But on the Read More ›
COSM 2023 Now on YouTube!
COSM 2023 explored the nature of artificial intelligence, as well as its future potential and risks.You can now watch the 2023 COSM Technology Summit on YouTube. If you weren’t able to attend, or perhaps you want to revisit some of your favorite speakers, we are now releasing the second tranche of videos for your enjoyment. Click here to go to the COSM 2023 Playlist on YouTube! COSM 2023 explored the nature of artificial intelligence, as well as its future potential and risks. Stephen Wolfram spoke about his efforts to make the world more computable so that computers can help us understand the world. Afterward, George Gilder and Bob Metcalfe joined him in a fascinating discussion about Turing machines, neural networks, and AI-driven language models. A panel featuring William Dembski, Robert Marks, and George Montanez offered Read More ›
Wrestling with AI: Making More and Better Disciples
AI may have "knowledge," but it lacks wisdom.Even if it were possible that AI reaches consciousness — it will never have the mind of Christ.
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Computers Still Do Not “Understand”
Don't be seduced into attributing human traits to computers.Imagine people making decisions that are influenced by an LLM that does not understand the meaning of any of the words it inputs and outputs.
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Defending Why We’re More than Machines
We need to look beyond materialism to understand what it means to be human.If something like dualism is true, then it goes a long way to showing the implausibility of the idea that we are solely meat machines, robots, etc.
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Science Needs a Mind to Work
The use of science to discredit the existence of mental subjects is fatally flawed.The idea that science has somehow shown the irrelevance of the mind to explaining behavior is seriously confused.
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