Ontology and Artificial Intelligence - Fall 2025

Department of Philosophy, University at Buffalo

Fall 2025 - PHI637SEM-SMI2 - Special Topics: Ontology and Artificial Intelligence - Class Number 24371

Faculty: Barry Smith

Hybrid

in person: Monday 4-5:50pm, 141 Park Hall

remote synchronous, Monday 4-5:50pm; dial-in details will be supplied by email

remote asynchronous, dial-in details will be supplied by email

Grading

Essay (at least 2000 words) : 40%

Presentation (and accompanying powerpoint deck) on December 8: 40%

Class Participation 20%

Attendance at the synchronous session on December 8, featuring student presentations, is compulsory for all students

This is a 2 credit hour course. Students taking this course for 3 credit hours will be required to prepare an additional essay (3000 words), class presentation, and powerpoint deck.

Introduction

Ontology (also called 'metaphysics') is a subfield of philosophy which aims to establich the kinds of entities in the world -- including both the material and the mental world -- and the relations between them. Applied ontology applies philosophical ideas and methods to the understanding and to the support of those who are collecting, using, comparing, refining, evaluating or (today above all) generating data.

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. ChatGT and other large language models (LLMs) attempt to generate data from other data it obtains for example from crawling the internet.

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

Why Machines Will Never Rule the World: Artificial Intelligence without Fear (Routledge 2022, revised and enlarged edition published in 2025).

Draft Schedule

Monday, August 25 (4:00-5:50pm) Introduction to AI

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 of 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 has 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?

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

Can a computer have desires, a will, and emotions?

Can a computer have responsibility for its behavior?

Could a machine have something like a personal identity? Would I really survive if the contents of my brain were uploaded to the cloud?

In this first lecture we will address these and a series of other questions at the borderlines of philosophy and AI.

Some background:

Slides

Why Machines Will Never Rule the World

Monday, September 8 (4:00-5:50pm) Natural and Artificial 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?

Slides on IQ tests

Readings:

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

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

Background: Ersatz Definitions, Anthropomorphisms, and Pareidolia

There's no 'I' in 'AI', Steven Pemberton, Amsterdam, December 12, 2024

1. Esatz definitions: using words like 'thinks' as in 'the machine is thinking', but with meanings quite different from those we use when talking about human beings. As when we define 'flying' as moving through the air, and then jumping up and down and saying "look, I'm flying!"

2. Pareidolia: a psychological phenomenon that causes people to see patterns, objects, or meaning in ambiguous or unrelated stimuli

3. If you can't spot irony, you're not intelligent

Monday, September 15 (4:00-5:50pm) Limits of AI?

1. Surveys the technical fundamentals of AI: Methods, mathematics, usage

2. Distinguishes explicit and implicit mathematics

3. Outlines the theory of complex systems documented in our book

4. Shows why AI cannot model complex systems adequately and synoptically, and why they therefore cannot reach a level of intelligence equal to that of human beings.

Conclusion:

AI is a family of algorithms to automate repetitive events

Deep neural networks have nothing to do with neurons

AI is not artificial 'intelligence'; it is a branch of mathematics in which the attempt is made to use the Turing machine to its limits by using gigantically large amounts of data

Monday, September 22 (4:30 - 16:15) Transhumanism and digital immortality

1. Surveys the full spectrum of transhumanism and its cultural origins.

2. Debunks the feasibility of radically improving human beings via technology.

3. The ontology of the Eruv (why it would take all the fun out of real estate if everyone could live

4. Massive social agency is what generates all good things (e.g. opera, football, ...) -- and requires authority and punishment

Background:

Slides

Scott Adams: We are living in a simulation

AI and the meaning of life: