Mind Matters Natural and Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis

Taghuman exceptionalism (vs. computers)

no-ai-artificial-intelligence-forbidden-sign-lawsuit-copyright-stockpack-adobe-stock
No AI Artificial Intelligence Forbidden Sign Lawsuit Copyright

Supreme Court Ruling Strikes a Blow to “Generative AI”

Ouch. That's a big loss for AI. Here's why:

Can generative AI “think outside the box” even as it draws from preexisting material on the internet? Are the images it produces protected under “fair use”? The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) has decided “no.” AI fails to be “transformative,” meaning it can’t create new meaning apart from its source material. Robert J. Marks reported on the recent lawsuit Warhol v. Goldsmith, writing, Assume AI is trained with all of the musical compositions of Bach. If the AI generates music that sounds like Bach, it is not transformative. The “meaning or message” can be construed as being the same. It’s still like Bach. On the other hand, if the AI is trained only on Bach but generates music Read More ›

library with arches
Custom library

From One Author to an AI

What might John Steinbeck think of AI writing a novel?

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 ›

reaching toward chatbot
Chat bot Robot Online Chatting Communication Business Internet Technology Concept

OpenAI Launches Impressive New Chatbot: ChatGPT

The sophisticated AI tool could revolutionize the internet, and come with big cost

Artificial intelligence is making great strides in 2022. A few months ago, the company OpenAI introduced DALL-E, a text-to-image generator, which they made open to the public. Some have raised concerns over the future role of artists and copyright issues considering AI art generators. Does AI pose a threat to human creators? Well, that question just got weightier and more multifaceted. OpenAI just released ChatGPT, what writer Jacob Carpenter calls, “the most advanced, user-friendly chatbot to enter the public domain.” ChatGPT can “write lines of code, pen a college-level essay, author responses in the voice of a pirate, and write a piano piece in Mozart’s style.” Carpenter goes on to point out that some are wondering if the chatbot threatens Read More ›

funny-boy-and-beagle-dog-are-watching-laptop-on-sofa-in-room-stockpack-adobe-stock
funny boy and beagle dog are watching laptop on sofa in room

AI expert: Stop Distinguishing Between AI, Human and Animal Minds

Aaron Sloman’s approach to minds sounds a bit like panpsychism — which is increasingly accepted in science — but there are differences

Philip Ball, author of The Book of Minds: How to understand ourselves and other beings, from animals to AI to aliens (University of Chicago Press, 2022), profiles University of Birmingham computer scientist Aaron Sloman, whose 1984 paper, “The structure of the space of possible minds” sought to account for human, animal, and AI minds as “behaving systems.” Along the way, Sloman came to a significant conclusion: “We must abandon the idea that there is one major boundary between things with and without minds,” he wrote. “Instead, informed by the variety of types of computational mechanisms already explored, we must acknowledge that there are many discontinuities, or divisions within the space of possible systems: the space is not a continuum, nor Read More ›