TagRobert J. Marks
Of AI and Aliens: Two Philosophers Give Their Thoughts
These sound minds are great resources to draw from in the chaos of our times
The Sound of Freedom: How Human Trafficking and Porn Compromises National Security
Robert J. Marks and Charlie Crockett discuss how the normalization of online pornography is connected with sex trafficking and abuse. In fact, the two industries are inextricably linked. They also discuss how military communications are affected by the widespread use of porn because of the high demand for spectrum (a limited resource). Additional Resources
Is an Information-Based Currency Possible?
Two philosophers talk about the potential of digital, decentralized forms of money and exchangeIn today’s featured video, enjoy an older but essential interview on the topic of alternative forms of money like cryptocurrency. Philosopher Jay Richards interviews mathematician, entrepreneur, and philosopher Dr. Bill Dembski about his unique thought experiment regarding how one could create a decentralized, DIY, information-based currency. Richards also explores with Dembski the concepts of natural and artificial intelligence. We’ve been sharing a number of lectures from past COSM conferences. This video is just one of many you can find at the Bradley Center’s YouTube page. There you’ll find several lectures, interviews, and panels dealing with issues that range from economics, Big Tech, and artificial intelligence. Notable speakers include 2022 Kyoto Prize winner Carver Mead, venture capitalist Peter Thiel, and George Gilder, co-founder of Discovery Institute Read More ›
Mission Impossible: Don’t Bother Me With Facts
The Tom Cruise action movie is built on faulty AI assumptions, but it's still entertainingEver watch a movie with a movie-talker? That’s someone who ruins a show by talking out loud over the audio. More than once, my wife has asked me, “What did he just say?” I usually have no idea because I didn’t understand either. But her question talks over the next few lines of the movie so the interval of me not hearing the audio is prolonged. I occasionally watch a movie with a good friend Lou, a former police officer. Lou’s a movie-talker, especially when we watch police movies. He’ll interrupt the movie with nit-picky comments like: “That’s not a real shotgun. A real shotgun would kick back, and the barrel would angle up after each shot. There was no Read More ›
The Sound of Freedom: Social Media and Human Trafficking
Robert J. Marks and Charlie Crockett continue their conversation on the sad reality of human trafficking. In this episode, they focus particularly on how social media has become a place where predators will search and highlight children’s vulnerabilities — which so many young people share online. Marks and Crockett encourage parents to develop relationships of trust with their children and Read More ›
Creative Computers? Marks and Medved on The Rise of Artificial Intelligence
What can a computer do now and what will it be able to do in the future?What can a computer do now and what will it be able to do in the future? A remarkable amount of confusion surrounds these questions. On a classic episode of “Great Minds” with Michael Medved, Dr. Robert Marks of Discovery Institute’s Bradley Center for Natural and Artificial Intelligence casts some very helpful light on the limits of AI. Also consider purchasing Dr. Marks’s book Non-Computable You: What You Do That Artificial Intelligence Never Will. We’ve been sharing a number of lectures from past COSM conferences and other videos related to artificial intelligence and technology. This video is just one of many you can find at the Bradley Center’s YouTube page. There you’ll find several lectures, interviews, and panels dealing with issues Read More ›
The Sound of Freedom: Human Trafficking In your Own Back Yard
Robert Marks speaks on the difficult topic of human trafficking with his guest Charlie Crockett, who works with the anti-trafficking advocacy organization Unbound Now. Human trafficking is the fastest-growing criminal industry in the world and goes undetected all over the U.S. Marks and Crockett talk about the scope of the problem, common misconceptions about trafficking, and how to help victims in need. Read More ›
Does ChatGPT Pass the Creativity Test?
What does ChatGPT have to do in order to be considered creative?What is creativity? Where does it come from? Why are some things humans do considered creative, while other things mundane? Can AI be creative? To answer these questions, let’s come up with a definition. Creativity at least means something new has been done. No work that copies what has come before is considered creative. A Creativity Criteria Just doing something new is not enough either. If it were, then I can easily be creative by flipping a coin 100 times. That specific sequence of coin flips will only occur once in the entire history of humanity. But no one would say I was creative when I flipped a coin. This means creativity has to generate a new insight. However, these two criteria are not adequate, Read More ›
Lemoine and Marks: A Friendly Discussion on AI’s Capacities
Marks and Lemoine disagree on whether AI can be sentientToday’s featured video from the 2022 COSM conference features a distinguished panel of artificial intelligence (AI) experts, include Blake Lemoine and Robert J. Marks. They debate the meaning of artificial intelligence, what the future holds for its application (both positive and negative), and how far AI can be taken in terms of mimicking and even exceeding human capabilities. Lemoine is famous for his claims on AI’s “sentience” and his work at Google on the Large Language Model system “LaMDA.” Marks, on the other hand, appreciates Lemoine’s view but strongly maintains that creativity is a uniquely human capacity, and that machines will never attain consciousness. For more on Marks’s views, consider purchasing his 2022 book Non-Computable You: What You Do That Read More ›
Can Crypto Reverse the Tech Decline?
Listen to a 2019 COSM panel on crypto and the blockchainFor today’s featured COSM video, enjoy this panel from the 2019 conference on cryptocurrencies, the blockchain, and its potential for the tech world. The panel explores the future of cryptocurrency/blockchain technologies, and considers the implications for global money, global security, and internet architecture. We’ve been sharing a number of lectures from past COSM conferences. This video is just one of many you can find at the Bradley Center’s YouTube page. There you’ll find several lectures, interviews, and panels dealing with issues that range from economics, Big Tech, and artificial intelligence. Notable speakers include 2022 Kyoto Prize winner Carver Mead, venture capitalist Peter Thiel, and George Gilder, co-founder of Discovery Institute and author of Life After Capitalism: The Meaning of Wealth, the Future of the Economy, and Read More ›
Is Mathematics Discovered or Invented?
Some think math is invented. Evidence, though, points towards discovery.Some think math is invented. (See the article by Peter Biles.) Evidence, though, points towards discovery. Simultaneous mathematical discovery supports this viewpoint. Many mathematical breakthroughs are sometimes independently reported by two or more mathematicians at roughly the same time. The most famous is the simultaneous discovery of calculus by Isaac Newton and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. Newton was secretive about his discovery and shared his results with only a few members of the Royal Society. When Leibnitz published his discovery of the calculus, Newton charged him with plagiarism. Today, historians agree that the discoveries were independent of each other. Here are some other lesser-known examples of simultaneous discovery. The Papoulis-Gerchberg Algorithm (PGA). The PGA is an ingenious method for recovering lost Read More ›
Marks Interviewed for a Fortune Article
The engineering professor and Mind Matters podcast host said we need to play down the AI hypeThe insightful contributions of Walter Bradley Center’s Robert J. Marks continue to gain traction and attention. Marks was interviewed by Fortune magazine on artificial intelligence and its current hype. Marks told Fortune that we’re currently on a “hype curve,” saying: “We’ve always had this hype around A.I.,” Marks told Fortune, referencing the Perceptron. The professor said part of the reason investors and consumers are so caught up in the trend is generative A.I.’s ability to replicate humans. “There’s a lot of psychological aspects to the hype around artificial intelligence,” he noted. Systems like ChatGPT and Bard’s use “seductive optics” and eerie mimicry to appear more intelligent than they really are, said Marks, who is also director of the Walter Bradley Center for Read More ›
Marks: The More Complex the AI, the More It Could Go Wrong
Robert J. Marks's new article discusses how AI's growing complexity makes it harder to regulateRobert J. Marks, director of the Walter Bradley Center for Natural & Artificial Intelligence, has a brand new article out over at Newsmax on the complexity of artificial intelligence and how, regardless of how many “band-aids” we put on its problematic outputs, it’s impossible to fully regulate a machine with this level of sophistication. Because AI is not a “slave to the truth,” it always needs improvement and correction by its human users. The problem is that we can’t avoid some of the damages until they’re already wrought. Marks writes, The more complex a system, the greater the number of ways it can respond and the more ways it can go wrong. The greater the number of possible responses, the Read More ›
What Will the Internet Look like in 10 Years?
Is a decentralized and digital system of currency the financial future? What is the "Web 3.0"?In the latest Mind Matters podcast, host Robert J. Marks sat with Adam Goad, a computer engineer from Baylor, to discuss the future of the Internet and the myriad of possibilities involved in the cryptocurrency and blockchain revolution. Is a decentralized and digital system of currency the financial future? What is the “Web 3.0”? Here’s the official description: In the age of data harvesting and Big Tech monopolies, what will the Internet look like in a decade? In today’s episode, Robert J. Marks speaks with computer engineer Adam Goad about “Web 3.0,” decentralization, cryptocurrency, and the future of the blockchain. Visit the podcast section of the site for more illuminating conversations on a broad array of topics in tech, culture, Read More ›
Revisiting the Mission of Mind Matters
Robert J. Marks on why Mind Matters (still) mattersOriginally posted in 2018. Mind Matters is a podcast and a news and commentary site where “artificial and natural intelligence meet head-on.” That’s a great slogan, but what does it mean? As your host for the podcast part of the site, I thought I’d take advantage of my role to talk you about some of our exciting plans for both the podcast and the online journal (the latter to be edited by science journalist Denyse O’Leary). Here’s a quick run-down: Topics Mind Matters will track the latest developments in applied AI and technology. How will AI continue to augment human performance and abilities? What are the latest innovations of AI? And how does AI affect you? How is AI applied in pricing Read More ›
What is the Future of the Internet?
In the age of data harvesting and Big Tech monopolies, what will the Internet look like in a decade? In today’s episode, Robert J. Marks speaks with computer engineer Adam Goad about “Web 3.0,” decentralization, cryptocurrency, and the future of the blockchain. Additional Resources
Westworld: Episode 2 Review
The whole point of the show is to explore a theory of consciousnessIn episode one, several robots break down. It appears they are accessing memories thanks to an unexpected update, which causes the robots to glitch and seize up, unable to communicate. The updated robots are recalled and the worst of them are decommissioned. In episode two, Dolores wakes up, hearing Bernard’s voice in the middle of the night. She goes outside, and it’s later revealed that she finds a gun buried in the dirt. After we’ve seen Dolores rise from her bed thanks to Bernard’s call, we meet William. He and his future brother-in-law are visiting the park. This is William’s first time in Westworld, and he isn’t excited to be there. He’s humoring his future relative. Episode two continues in Read More ›
Jacques Ellul and the Technocratic Society
Unhappy is the society dominated by "technique"Jacques Ellul was a twentieth-century writer and philosopher who left us an abundance of riches on the impact of technology on our modern world, or what he called the “technological society.” I’ve been working through his book The Technological Society for a while now. It’s dense, slow reading, but is jam packed with insights. Aside from merely the proliferation and growth of technology in the West over the last century, Ellul notes that we’ve become a culture obsessed with “technique,” performing tasks for efficiency instead of intrinsic purpose, and training ourselves to relate to other people in like manner. What matters under technique’s domination is not morals or human dignity but about outcome and “results,” being bigger, better, and faster. Read More ›
The One Thing Only Humans Can Do
What makes human beings unique? Will artificial intelligence take over our jobs?What makes human beings unique? Will artificial intelligence take over our jobs? The Walter Bradley Center for Natural and Artificial Intelligence, which publishes Mind Matters, was launched largely to respond to questions like these. In a panel discussion at the Dallas launch of the Bradley Center, Baylor Professor of Computer Engineering Robert J. Marks offered some thoughts on the evening’s topic, “Will ‘Smart’ Machines Take Over Our Jobs?” This is a great video to watch if you’re new to Mind Matters or are interested in learning more about the unique perspective of the Bradley Center. Marks doesn’t offer doomsday approximations of the future of AI, but neither does he disregard the challenges it poses. According to him, though, there’s one Read More ›