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
Barry Smith is one of the world's most widely cited philosophers. He has contributed to the history of philosophy and works today primarily to the field of applied ontology,
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 of 2000 words and 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).
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 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?
- 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?
We will describe in detail how stochastic AI works, 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.
Draft Schedule
Monday, August 25 (4:00-5:50pm) Introduction to ontology, AI, and their interactions
An introduction to the course: Impact of philosophy on AI; impact of AI on philosophy
Part 2: 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.
- 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 1 NO CLASS: LABOR DAY
Monday, September 8 (4:00-5:50pm) Limits of AI?
1. Surveys the technical fundamentals of AI: Methods, mathematics, usage as well
2. Outlines the theory of complex systems documented in our book
3. 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.
Background: Will AI Destroy Humanity? A Soho Forum Debate (Spoiler: Jobst won)
Monday, September 15 (4:30 - 16:15) Transhumanism and digital immortality
1. Surveys the full spectrum of transhumanism and its cultural origins.
2. Debunk the feasibility of radically improving human beings via technology.
Background:
- TESCREALISM, or: why AI gods are so passionate about creating Artificial General Intelligence
- Considering the existential risk of Artificial Superintelligence
Monday, Seotember 22 (4:00-5:50pm) Can a machine be conscious?
Machines cannot have intentionality; they cannot have experiences which are about something.
- Searle: Minds, Brains, and Programs
The machine will
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, September 29 (4:00-5:50pm)
Are we living in a simulation?
The Fermi Paradox
Bostrom's Simulation Argument
David Chalmers' Reality+
Monday October 6 (4:00-5:50pm)
An introduction to the statistical foundations of AI
The types of AI
- Deterministic AI
- Good old fashioned AI (GOFAI)
- Basic stochastic AI
- How regression works
- Advanced stochastic AI
- Neural networks and deep learning
- Hybrid
- Neurosymbolic AI
- Background reading: Why machines will never rule the world, chapter 8
==Monday October 13 NO CLASS: FALL BREAK
Monday October 20 (4:00-5:50pm)
Monday October 27 (4:00-5:50pm)
Monday November 3 (4:00-5:50pm)
Personal knowledge
- Knowing how vs Knowing that
- Personal knowledge and science
- Creativity
- Empathy
- Entrepreneurship
- Leadership and control (and ruling the world)
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.
Monday November 10 (4:00-5:50pm) Are We Living in a Simulation?
- Are we living in a simulation?, Slides
Monday November 17 (4:00-5:50pm)
Monday November 24 (4:00-5:50pm)
Monday December 1 (4:00-5:50pm)
Monday December 8 (4:00-5:50pm) Compulsory in-person or synchronous oral presentation
Background Material
An Introduction to AI for Philosophers
(AI experts are invited to criticize what I have to say in this talk)
An Introduction to Philosophy for Computer Scientists
(Philosophers are invited to criticize what I have to say in this talk)
John McCarthy, "What has AI in common with philosophy?"
and from its Coscompanion volume
