Mind Matters Natural and Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis

TagCorinne Purtill

a-hand-drops-a-ballot-into-a-transparent-plastic-ballot-box-on-election-day-at-a-polling-station-the-will-of-the-voters-free-elections-generative-ai-stockpack-adobe-stock
a hand drops a ballot into a transparent plastic ballot box on election day at a polling station. the will of the voters. free elections. Generative AI

Can Evolution Create Free Will? A Neurologist Says Yes

Could the impersonal natural force of evolution shape hierarchies in the human cerebral cortex so that we have the free will that it does not itself have?

The traditional materialist stance, one that neuroscientist Sam Harris, theoretical physicist Sabine Hossenfelder, and evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne endorse — along with many thinkers past and present — is that in this universe there can’t be free will. Albert Einstein (1879–1955) expressed the basic view in a 1932 address to the Spinoza Society where he stated,””Human beings, in their thinking, feeling and acting are not free agents but are as causally bound as the stars in their motion.” Now a debate seems to have started up again. From one corner we learn that free will could possibly exist, provided that it is materialized or, if you like “evolutionized.” A new key player is primatologist and Stanford professor of neurology, Robert Read More ›

mini-robot-work-stockpack-adobe-stock
mini robot work

Can a Chatbot Tell Jokes. Yes, If They Are Stale

As chatbots sort through the vast mass of online information for appropriate responses to questions, jokes were bound to come up

Corinne Purtill reported a year ago at Time Magazine on Jon the Robot, a chatbot that was programmed to learn to tell stand-up comedy jokes: An experiment billed as a comedy act, Jon is the brainchild of Naomi Fitter, an assistant professor in the School of Mechanical, Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering at Oregon State University. The tiny android performs when a handler (who must also hold the mic) presses a button, then tells the same jokes in the same order, like a grizzled veteran comic at a down-market Vegas casino. Corinne Purtill, “Artificial Intelligence Can Now Craft Original Jokes—And That’s No Laughing Matter” at Time 2030 (January 4, 2022) But the robot’s act is more human than it might first Read More ›