Philosophy and Artificial Intelligence 2021
Barry Smith
Readings
“Making AI Meaningful Again” [1]
“There is no General AI” [2]
Schedule
Monday February 22 2021 14:30 - 17:15: The Impossibility of Digital Immortality
The Turing Test and the problem of natural language production
Why machines will have no consciousness and no will
Why you cannot exist outside your body
Readings:
- Martine Rothblatt: Mind is Deeper Than Matter TO BE SUPPLIED AT USI SITE
- 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: Natural and Artificial Intelligence
What do intelligence tests measure?
Functions of the human brain
Problems with the 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
Wednesday February 24 2021 09:30 - 12:15: Why Not Robot Police?
On why AI ethics is (a) impossible, (b) unnecessary (with Jobst Landgrebe)
Readings:
- Moor: Four kinds of ethical robots
- Jobst Landgrebe and Barry Smith: No AI Ethics TO BE SUPPLIED AT USI SITE
Wednesday May 12 2021 14:30 - 17.15
- Searle's Chinese Room argument
- Intelligence vs. consciousness
- What is intelligence and what do intelligence tests measure?
- Driverless philosophy: How data science can help
- the history of philosophy
- to make progress in philosophy
- Readings:
- Slides
Friday May 14 2021 09:30 - 12:15
- The cycles of AI enthusiasm and AI winters
- Basic Formal Ontology (ISO/IEC 21838-2)
- Upper Level Ontologies
- DOLCE
- Slides
Monday May 17 2021 14:30 - 17:15
- Wittgenstein and the Turing Test. Part 1
- Slides
- The Turing test
- 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
- The Turing test
- Paper:There is no general AI
Student presentations
- Carola Calabrese: Universal Intelligence - A definition of Machine intelligence
Fri May 15 15:30 - 18:15 3h
- Wittgenstein and the Turing Test: Part 2
Student presentations TBD
Tuesday May 18 2021 14:30 - 17:15
Wednesday May 19 2021 14:30 - 17:15
Thursday May 20 2021 13:30 - 16:15
Friday-Saturday May 21-22: SNF Conference on Philosophy and Artificial Intelligence
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.
