Mind Matters Natural and Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis

TagRobert J. Marks

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Coronavirus market crash and financial crisis

COVID-19: When 900 Bytes Shut Down the World

A great physicist warned us, information precedes matter and energy: Bit before it

The COVID-19 virus contains about as much information as a sticker in WhatsApp. Walter Bradley Center director Robert J. Marks and Dr. Daniel Andrés Díaz-Pachón  explore a dreadful truth:  “Human biology is so finely tuned that less than a kilobyte of information can stop the world.”

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Digital mind

Why Our Minds Can’t Really Be Uploaded to Computers

The basic problem is that human minds aren’t “computable.” Peter and Jane are not bits and bytes

The underlying problem with creating immortality by uploading our minds to computers is that people are conscious and even the most sophisticated foreseeable computers are not. And we are not at all sure what consciousness even IS.

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Machine learning technology diagram with artificial intelligence (AI),neural network,automation,data mining in VR screen.businessman hand working with modern technology and digital layer effect.

Can Human Minds Be Reduced to Computer Programs?

In Silicon Valley that has long been a serious belief. But are we really anywhere close?

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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Sick girl lying on the hospital bed and her mom kiss to support.

Can People in Comas Have Abstract Thoughts?

Neurosurgeon Michael Egnor discusses how we might test for that ability

In the recent podcast, “Michael Egnor on Whether People in Comas Can Think,” Robert J. Marks raised an interesting point with Egnor: Can people in comas think abstractly or do they form thoughts only at a much more basic level, given how physically distressed they are? The answer might surprise you.

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Robot and human cooperating in jigsaw puzzle

Thinking Machines? Has the Lovelace Test Been Passed?

Surprising results do not equate to creativity. Is there such a thing as machine creativity?

The feats of machines like AlphaGo are due to superior computational power, not to creativity at originating new ideas. Computer scientist Selmer Bringsjord sees the ability to write, say, a novel of ideas as a more realistic test of human vs. computer achievement.

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The poetry of Love

Thinking Machines? The Lovelace Test Raises the Stakes

The Turing test has had a free ride in science media for far too long, says an AI expert

In the view of Rensselaer philosopher and computer scientist Selmer Bringsjord, the iconic Turing test for human-like intelligence in computers is inadequate and easily gamed. Merely sounding enough like a human to fool people does not establish human-like intelligence. He proposes the much more challenging Lovelace test, based on an observation from computer pioneer Ada Lovelace (1815–1852) that true creativity is what distinguishes humans from machines.

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Sick mature woman lying in bed

Can Loved Ones in a Coma Hear Us?

Modern brain imaging studies show that very often they can. And, with help from new technology, they can answer us too

Pioneering research using brain imaging (fMRI) over the last fifteen years has shown that, even in deep coma, people can hear, understand, and respond. It’s no longer just anecdotes from caregivers. The controversial Terri Schiavo case might be decided very differently today.

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If Your Brain Were Cut in Half, Would You Still Be One Person?

Yes, with minor disabilities. Roger Sperry’s split-brain research convinced him that the mind and free will are real

The true significance of the split-brain experiments goes far beyond the significance of the lateralization of the brain; your essential unity also points to the immaterial nature of the mind.

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Choosing the High Road or Low Road

How Libet’s Free Will Research Is Misrepresented

Sometimes, says Michael Egnor, misrepresentation may be deliberate because Libet’s work doesn’t support a materialist perspective

“Neuroscientist Benjamin Libet’s experiments are described very often both in the scientific literature and in the popular press as supportive of materialism—which is something that they don’t support and something that Libet made very clear was not his conclusion.” – Michael Egnor

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How a Neuroscientist Imaged Free Will (and “Free Won’t”)

At first, Libet thought that free will might not be real. Then he looked again…

Neuroscientist Benjamin Libet (1916–2007), who studied measured brain activity as people make decisions, came across the power of “free won’t”: an apparently free decision not to do something we had decided on earlier.

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Choose your way

How Did “Wanting” Things Emerge?

Agency (“wanting” or “deciding” things) is as hard a problem in physics as consciousness

Rocks don’t resist becoming sand but plants resist, by various strategies, becoming insect food. All life forms seem to need and want things; the most intelligent ones want more complex and less obviously necessary things. At New Scientist, we are told that wanting things is a “superpower” that physics can’t explain. But are we asking the wrong questions?

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Two Scientists in the Brain Research Laboratory work on a Project, Using Personal Computer with MRI Scans Show Brain Anomalies. Neuroscientists at Work.
Two Scientists in the Brain Research Laboratory work on a Project, Using Personal Computer with MRI Scans Show Brain Anomalies. Neuroscientists at Work.

Pioneer Neuroscientists Believed the Mind Is More Than the Brain

A number of them were Nobel Laureates and their views were informed by their work

In a podcast discussion with Walter Bradley Center director Robert J. Marks, neurosurgeon Michael Egnor talks about how many famous neuroscientist became dualists—that is, they concluded that there is something about human beings that goes beyond matter—based on observations they made during their work.

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Photo by Josh Marshall

What Is the Difference Between “Soul” and “Spirit”?

Neurosurgeon Michael Egnor explains the subtle distinction between the meaning of the two, often confused, terms

Loosely speaking, the soul is the principle of life in a body and the spirit refers more to the immaterial aspects of the soul, which are the ability to reason and the ability to make decisions based on reason.

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The Mind’s Reality Is Consistent with Neuroscience

A neglected “dualist” theory offers some insights

Neurosurgeon Michael Egnor thinks that the explanation of the relationship of the mind to the brain that best fits today’s neuroscience is that certain powers, particularly the intellect and will, are not generated by matter but are immaterial. However, other properties of the mind, like perception, memory and imagination are physical, generated by brain matter.

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Soldiers are Using Laptop Computer for Surveillance During Military Operation in the Desert.

Killer Robots Is Now Available in Audible Format

Artificial intelligence expert Robert J. Marks contends that America must remain competitive in lethal AI military technology

In the book, Baylor professor Marks asks “What if ambitious nations such as China and Iran develop lethal AI military technology but the United States does not?” He argues that “Advanced technology not only wins wars but gives pause to otherwise aggressive adversaries.”

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AI(Artificial Intelligence) concept.

Why Eliminative Materialism Cannot Be a Good Theory of the Mind

Thinking that the mind is simply the brain, no more and no less, involves a hopeless contradiction

How can you have a proposition that the mind doesn’t exist? That means propositions don’t exist and that means, in turn, that you don’t have a proposition.

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Military Drone in the blue sky, 3D rendering

Robert J. Marks: Peace May Depend on Killer Robots

Calls for a ban on killer robots impact the United States but not the non-democratic nations who are developing them now

In an op-ed at CNS this morning, Walter Bradley Center director Robert J. Marks summarizes his case, as an artificial intelligence expert, that the United States must remain competitive in military AI or, as it is called, “killer robots,” because hostile nations are forging ahead.

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Military drone operator looking at computer screen

Killer Robots on the Radio

The issues around AI in warfare seem fairly simple until we look at them more closely

Can we afford to let hostile powers develop AI warfare and not do so ourselves? Artificial intelligence expert Robert J. Marks has been discussing the issue in podcasts with various hosts across the country. 

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Soldiers are Using Drone for Scouting During Military Operation in the Desert.

Book at a Glance: Robert J. Marks’s Killer Robots

What if ambitious nations such as China and Iran develop lethal AI military technology but the United States does not?

Artificial intelligence expert Robert J. Marks tackles the contentious subject of military drones in his just-published book, The Case for Killer Robots: Why America’s Military Needs to Continue Development of Lethal AI. Many sources (30 countries, 110+ NGOs, 4500 AI experts, the UN Secretary General, the EU, and 26 Nobel Laureates) have called for these lethal AI weapons to be banned. Dr. Marks, a Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Baylor University, disagrees. What if ambitious nations such as China and Iran develop lethal AI military technology but the United States does not? Nations that wish to maintain independence (sovereignty), he argues, must remain competitive in military AI. (“Advanced technology not only wins wars but gives pause to Read More ›

Predator Type Drone 3D artwork

Listen to Robert J. Marks’ New Book The Case for Killer Robots

Should the United States military pursue development of lethal autonomous artificial intelligence weapons? Robert J. Marks, Director of Discovery Institute’s Walter Bradley Center for Natural & Artificial Intelligence, says yes. He makes his case for lethal A.I. weapons in his book, The Case for Killer Robots: Why America’s Military Needs to Continue Development of Lethal A.I. To find out how Read More ›