Philosophy and Artificial Intelligence 2021

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Barry Smith

MAP, USI, Lugano, Spring 2021

Schedule

Monday February 22 2021 14:30 - 17:15: Some examples of philosophical problems

Slides

Introduction to the class

What is computation?

What is a language

The Turing Test and the problem of natural language production

What is consciousness?

What is will?

Can machines have a will?

What is intentionality?

Readings:

John Searle: Minds, Brains, and Programs
Jobst Landgrebe and Barry Smith: There is no Artificial General Intelligence

Tuesday February 23 2021 14:30 - 17:15 The Impossibility of Digital Immortality

Slides

Part One: Immortality

Transhumanism and Identity: Can we download the contents of our brains onto a computer and become immortal?

Why you cannot exist outside your body

Readings:

Martine Rothblatt: Mind is Deeper Than Matter [TO BE SUPPLIED AT USI SITE]
Scott Adams: We are living in a simulation
AI and The Matrix

Part Two: Intelligence

The classical psychological definitions of intelligence are:  

A. the ability to adapt to new situations (applies both to humans and to animals) 
B. a very general mental capability (possessed only by humans) that, among other things, involves the ability to reason, plan, solve problems, think abstractly, comprehend complex ideas, learn quickly, and learn from experience 

What are the essential marks of human intelligence? 

For consideration in Wednesday's session: to what extent can artificial intelligence be achieved? 

Readings:

Linda S. Gottfredson. Mainstream Science on Intelligence. In: Intelligence 24 (1997), pp. 13–23.

Wednesday February 24, 2021 14:30 - 16:00: The Legg-Hutter Definition of 'Universal Intelligence'

(with Jobst Landgrebe)

Slides
Video

Jobst Landgrebe is the founder and CEO of Cognotekt, GmBH, an AI company based in Cologne specialised in the design and implementation of holistic AI solutions. He has 16 years experience in AI field, 8 years as a management consultant and software architect. He has also worked as a physician and mathematician.

What is it that researchers and engineers are trying to do when they talk of achieving ‘Artificial Intelligence’?

To what extent can AI be achieved? 

Problems with the Legg-Hutter Definition of Intelligence

Readings:

Shane Legg and Marcus Hutter: Universal Intelligence: A Definition of Machine Intelligence
Jobst Landgrebe and Barry Smith: Making AI Meaningful Again

Friday February 26 2021 16:30 - 18:00 AI Ethics

(with Jobst Landgrebe)

Slides
Video

What is the basis of ethics as applied to humans?

Utilitarianism
Value ethics

On what basis should we build an AI ethics?

On why AI ethics is (a) impossible, (b) unnecessary

Readings:

Moor: Four kinds of ethical robots
Jobst Landgrebe and Barry Smith: No AI Ethics
Crane: The AI Ethics Hoax

Monday May 17 2021 14:30 - 18:00 (Room A12) Some Philosophical Questions About AI

There Will Be No Singularity: A Survey of the Argument
The Dreyfus argument against the possibility of AGI
Our argument against the possibility of AGI
Three Types of Impossibility: Technical, Physical, Mathematical
Structure of the book:
Part I: Properties of the Human Mind
Nomological materialistic monism
Alternative views on the mind-body problem
Human and machine intelligence
Primal intelligence
Objectifying intelligence
Definitions of intelligence in AI
The Legg-Hutter definition
Defining useful machine intelligence
What is language?
Language and intentions
Speech as sensorimotor activity
Language and dialect change
The variance and complexity of human language
Conversation and contexts

Is an AI really an intelligence?

What sorts of problems can AI solve?
Making AI Meaningful Again
What sorts of problems can AI not solve?
There is no general AI
Can we build an AI by emulating the brain?
David Chalmers on Brain Emulation
Can we build an AI by some other method?
David Chalmers on Artificial Evolution

Readings:

David J. Chalmers: The Singularity: A Philosophical Analysis
David J. Chalmers: The Singularity: A Reply to Commentators

Student presentations

Tommaso Soriani: Of (Zombie) Mice and Animats
Maria Andromachi Kolyvaki: Statistical Learning Theory as a Framework for the Philosophy of Induction.
Ismaele Affini: The Ugly Truth About Ourselves and Our Robot Creations: The Problem of Bias and Social Inequity
Anita Buckley: The limits of machine intelligence
Osama Khalil: Trolleyology: "Would you kill the fat man?"

Tuesday May 18 2021 14:30 - 18:00 (Room A12) Language+

An Ontology of Terrorism
Sentiment Analysis
An Ontology of Language
Language+Behaviour
Language+Violence
Slides

Student presentations

Rwiddhi Chakraborty: The Myth of Hypercomputation
Amir Sulic: Why general AI will not be realized
Brian Pulfer: The Singularity and Machine Ethics
Peter Buttaroni: Adversarial Examples and the Deeper Riddle of Induction

Wednesday May 19 2021 14:30 - 18:00 (Room A21) First Dialogue with Jobst Landgrebe

AI and the Mathematics of Complex Systems
Preliminary Slides

Thursday May 20 2021 12:30 - 16:00 (Room A12) Second Dialogue with Jobst Landgrebe

AI and the Ontology of Power
Preliminary Video

Friday May 21 2021 12:30 - 14:00 (Room A12) Concluding Survey

Student Presentations

Giacomo De Colle: Mind Embodied and Embedded
Rocco Felici: On Black Box Models in AI Ethics
Julius Schulte: Explainable AI: How Disciplines Talk Past Each Other
Gabriel Carraretto: Backpropagation and the Brain
Michelle Damian: Performance vs. Competence in Human–Machine Comparisons

Course Description

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the subfield of Computer Science devoted to developing programs that enable computers to display behavior that can (broadly) be characterised as intelligent. On the strong version, the ultimate goal of AI is to create an artificial system that is as intelligent as a human being. Recent striking successes such as AlphaGo have convinced many not only that this objective is obtainable but also that in a not too distant future machines will become even more intelligent than human beings.

The actual and possible developments in AI open up a series of striking questions such as:

  • Can a computer have a conscious mind?
  • Can it have desires and emotions?
  • Would machine intelligence, if there is such a thing, be something comparable to human intelligence or something quite different?

In addition, these developments make it possible for us to consider a series of philosophical questions in a new light, including:

  • What is personal identity? Could a machine have something like a personal identity? Would I really survive if the contents of my brain were uploaded to the cloud?
  • What is it for a human to behave in an ethical manner? (Could there be something like machine ethics? Could machines used in fighting wars be programmed to behave ethically?)
  • What is a meaningful life? If routine, meaningless work in the future is performed entirely by machines, will this make possible new sorts of meaningful lives on the part of humans?

After introducing the relevant ideas and tools from both AI and philosophy, all the aforementioned questions will be thoroughly addressed in class discussions following lectures by Drs Facchini and Smith and presentations of relevant papers by the students.

Further Background Reading

Jordan Peterson's Essay Writing Guide
Max More and Natasha Vita-More (Eds.), The Transhumanist Reader: Classical and Contemporary Essays on the Science, Technology, and Philosophy of the Human Future, Wiley-Blackwell, 2013.