Philosophy and Artificial Intelligence 2025

Philosophy and Artificial Intelligence 2025

Jobst Landgrebe and Barry Smith

MAP, USI, Lugano, Spring 2025

Background

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the subfield of Computer Science devoted to developing programs that enable computers to display behavior that can (broadly) be characterized as intelligent. On the strong version, the ultimate goal of AI is to create what is called General Artificial Intelligence (AGI), by which is meant an artificial system that is as intelligent as a human being.

Since its inception in the middle of the last century AI has enjoyed repeated cycles of enthusiasm and disappointment (AI summers and winters). Recent successes of ChatGPT and other Large Language Models (LLMs) have opened a new era popularization of AI. For the first time, AI tools have been created which are immediately available to the wider population, who for the first time can have real hands-on experience of what AI can do.

These developments in AI open up a series of questions such as:

Will the powers of AI continue to grow in the future, and if so will they ever reach the point where they can be said to have intelligence equivalent to or greater than that of a human being?

Could we ever reach the point where we can accept the thesis that an AI system could have something like consciousness or sentience?

Could we reach the point where an AI system could be said to behave ethically, or to have responsibility for its actions.

Can quantum computers enable a stronger AI than what we have today?

We will describe in detail how stochastic AI work, and consider these and a series of other questions at the borderlines of philosophy and AI. The class will close with presentations of papers on relevant topics given by students.

Some of the material for this class is derived from our book

Why Machines Will Never Rule the World: Artificial Intelligence without Fear (Routledge 2022).

and from the companion volume

Symposium on Why Machines Will Never Rule the World — Guest editor, Janna Hastings, University of Zurich

which will appear as a special issue of the public access journal Cosmos + Taxis in early 2024.

Faculty

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 20 years experience in the AI field, 8 years as a management consultant and software architect. He has also worked as a physician and mathematician, and he views AI itself -- to the extent that it is not an elaborate hype -- as a branch of applied mathematics. CUrrently his primary focus is in the biomathematics of cancer.

Barry Smith is one of the world's most widely cited philosophers. He has contributed primarily to the field of applied ontology, which means applying philosophical ideas derived from analytical metaphysics to the concrete practical problems which arise where attempts are made to compare or combine heterogeneous bodies of data.

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 characterized 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 AlphaFold 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 a computer have desires, a will, and emotions?
• Can a computer have responsibility for its behavior
• Would machine intelligence, if there is such a thing, be something comparable to human intelligence or something quite different?

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

• 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. The class will close with presentations of papers on relevant topics given by students.

Grading

Essay with presentation: 80%

Essay with no presentation: 95%

Presentation: 15%

Class Participation 5%

Draft Schedule

==Tuesday, February 17 (14:30-17:15) <comments

<comments Introduction: Philosophy and Artificial Intelligence ==

We begin with a survey of the development of AI research from 1970 to today, paying attention especially to the background role of ontology (Knowledge Graphs) in this development.

We then outline the main theses of the recent book, Why Machines Will Never Rule the World, by Landgrebe and Smith, before moving on to discuss the relation between a human mind and the intelligence that might be ascribed to a machine.

Slides />

Wednesday February 21 (14:30-17:15): The Glory and the Misery of ChatGPT

Room: A23

Part 1: What is intelligence?

All students are expected to have some familiarity with Searle's Chinese Room Argument.

Machines cannot have intentionality; they cannot have experiences which are about something. Searle: Minds, Brains, and Programs

Slides

What are the essential marks of human 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 

Can a machine be intelligent in either of these senses?

Readings:

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

Human and machine intelligence

Jobst Landgrebe and Barry Smith: There is no Artificial General Intelligence

Part 2: An introduction to ChatGPT. How is it built? How does it work? Is it intelligent?

Can ChatGPT become intelligent?

Are Large Language Models a threat to humanity?

Capabilities, or: What do IQ tests measure?

Slides

Is Psychology Finished?

Slides

The human brain and the Theory of complex systems

Jobst Landgrebe and Barry Smith: Making AI Meaningful Again

S. Thurner et al. (2018): Introduction to the theory of complex systems (Oxford)

Thursday, February 22 (14:30 - 17:15): Can an Artificial Intelligence Act?

Room: A23

AI Ethics Slides

What is agency?

Featuring Emanuele Martinelli. Emanuele is a PhD student in philosophy at the University of Zurich, co-affiliated with the Chair of Political Philosophy and the Digital Society Initiative. He has a bachelor's in philosophy and a master's in philosophy and economics, both from USI.

What are the different types of agency?

Examples of collective agency, government agency, agency of socio-technical systems (armies, corporations, ...)

Relation between agency and responsibility. (Responsibility as the origin of ethics.)

Can an AI be responsibe?

Can there be such a thing as an AI will?

Agency and the capacities and limits of AI

Case study: AI and economic planning

Hayek's knowledge problem

The price system and market competition

Market economies vs planned economies: the agents at stake

Proposed ways to use AI to plan the economy

The role of the entrepreneur

Can AI be entrepreneurial

Background reading:

"On the Feasibility of Technosocialism"

"Group Agency and Artificial Intelligence"

"Toward a General Model of Agency"

Friday, February 23 (9:30 - 12:15) No Machine Will

Room: A23

Computers cannot have a will, because computers don't give a damn. Therefore there can be no machine ethics

The lack of the giving-a-damn-factor is taken by Yann LeCun as a reason to reject the idea that AI might pose an existential risk to humanity – an AI will have no desire for self-preservation “Almost half of CEOs fear A.I. could destroy humanity five to 10 years from now — but ‘A.I. godfather' says an existential threat is ‘preposterously ridiculous’” Fortune, June 15, 2023. See also here.

Implications of the absence of a machine will:

The problem of the singularity (when machines will take over from humans) will not arise

The idea of digital immortality will never be realized Slides

The idea that human beings are simulations can be rejected

There can be no AI ethics (only: ethics governing human beings when they use AI)

Fermi's paradox is solved

Monday, May 13 (9:30 - 12:15) The absolute limits of AI

Room: A23

Topics to be dealt with include:

What is AI?

How does it work?

What are its limits?

And what about ChatGPT?

Background: Will AI Destroy Humanity? A Soho Forum Debate (Spoiler: Jobst won)

Slides

Tuesday, May 14 (9:30 - 12:15) The ontology of physics

Room: A23

The ontology of physics

Slides

Wednesday May 15 (9:30 - 12:15): Are we living in a simulation? (II), digital twins and and Certifiable AI

Room: A23

On David Chalmers' theory of reality and the role of physics Slides

Thursday May 16 (14:30 - 18:15) The Replication Problem

Room: A23

Complex Systems and Cognitive Science: Why the Replication Problem is here to stay

The 'replication problem' is the the inability of scientific communities to independently confirm the results of scientific work. Much has been written on this problem especially as it arises in (social) psychology, and on potential solutions under the heading of 'open science'. But we will see that the replication problem has plagued medicine as a positive science since its beginnings (Virchov and Pasteur). This problem has become worse over the last 30 years and has massive consequences for healthcare practice and policy.

Slides

Background:

Reproducibility of Scientific Results, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2018

Science has been in a “replication crisis” for a decade

Irreproducibility Crisis and the Lehman Crash, Barry Smith, Youtube 2020

Friday May 17 (9:30-12:15) Student Presentations and Concluding Survey

Room: A23

9:45 Julien Mommer, What is the Intelligence in "Artificial Intelligence"

ChatGPT and its Future

The Indispensability of Human Creativity

Capabilities: The Interesting Version of the Story

Student Presentations

Background Material

An Introduction to AI for Philosophers

Video

Slides

(AI experts are invited to criticize what I have to say in this talk)

An Introduction to Philosophy for Computer Scientists

Video

Slides

(Philosophers are invited to criticize what I have to say in this talk)

John McCarthy, "What has AI in common with philosophy?"