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

Thursday, February 20 (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

-->

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?"