Questions tagged [philosophy]

For questions related to the philosophical aspects of artificial intelligence. Topics such as human/AI value alignment, artificial consciousness, the feasibility of AGI, the ethics of AI, Neo-Luddism, etc.

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Does machine learning philosophy translate into action effectively?

Can anyone tell me how to understand the machine learning philosophy as a guide to the effective use of AI for activism and organizing?
eristosca's user avatar
3 votes
1 answer
735 views

Why there are only three machine learning paradigms: supervised, unsupervised, reinforcement?

I read in books, blogs, and articles that there are three learning paradigms: supervised, unsupervised, and reinforcement. However, I have never found a proof that this list is exhaustive. Can it be ...
Vladislav Gladkikh's user avatar
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1 answer
71 views

Can LLMs be used to discover new laws of logic?

Can LLMs be used to discover new laws of logic? Stephen Wolfram seems to claim this in What Is ChatGPT Doing … and Why Does It Work?, § "What Really Lets ChatGPT Work?": is there a general ...
Geremia's user avatar
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-1 votes
1 answer
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SWE vs. AI…career change [closed]

I’m looking to switch careers and really want to take the dive, but became hesitant after chatgpt. My question is will it be worth it to devote time, energy and money into the switch if it’s likely to ...
swe_prospect's user avatar
1 vote
1 answer
103 views

Is understanding understandable?

While wandering about the ability of Large Language Models to understand, and the Chinese room argument (related question Is the "Chinese room" an explanation of how ChatGPT works?) I got ...
Jaume Oliver Lafont's user avatar
3 votes
1 answer
97 views

What is meant by "Deep Learning models are not understood"?

It is a sentence that I hear a lot and I guess I don't get what it means. It seems that the weight optimization procedure is very well understood and there is, to some extent, theoretical/empirical ...
benr's user avatar
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39 votes
7 answers
15k views

Is the "Chinese room" an explanation of how ChatGPT works?

Sorry if this question makes no sense. I'm a software developer but know very little about AI. Quite a while ago, I read about the Chinese room, and the person inside who has had a lot of training/...
Guntram Blohm's user avatar
-1 votes
1 answer
54 views

Why does some AI professionals think deep learning is "intelligent"?

Human is intelligent, this is the ultimate definition (although not rigorous) of intelligence. Ordinary programs are not considered "intelligent", even they can do so many smart things with ...
jw_'s user avatar
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2 votes
1 answer
156 views

Can an AI have awareness?

I was thinking about the following: According to Sir Roger Penrose "No computer has any awareness of what it does.". Now some context to his statement: Penrose’s argument in summary in his ...
Ed_Gravy's user avatar
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2 answers
137 views

Problem with the Turing Test as Performed

Could anyone explain this problem I have with the Turing test as performed? Turing (1950) in describing the test says the computer takes the part of the man then plays the game as when played between ...
Roddus's user avatar
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How to assess the goodness of a text generation algorithm

Take a RNN network fed with Shakespeare and generating Shakespeare-like text. Once a model seems mathematically fine, as can be assessed by observing its loss and accuracy over training epochs, how ...
kiriloff's user avatar
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1 answer
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Would empathy in AI be a reliable tool/capacity, or contribute to a solution to avoid harm done to humans or to other versions of AI?

TL;DR Would providing AI the capability of experiencing something as close as possible to the subjective human experience and from that acquiring empathy in the process be a solution, or contribute to ...
Verminous's user avatar
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2 votes
3 answers
150 views

Is there a recent book that covers the theoretical and philosophical aspects of artificial intelligence?

What are some recent books that introduce AI and neural networks while also discussing the related philosophical issues, like epistemology and whether AI is really thinking, etc.?
Geremia's user avatar
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1 vote
0 answers
105 views

Might AGI need to be flawed?

An example is the halting problem, which states computing cannot be solved by exhaustion, but which humans avoid trivially by becoming exhausted. Humans typically give up what seems like a lost cause ...
DukeZhou's user avatar
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2 votes
0 answers
33 views

Where is the difference between a neural network mapping a problem space and learning a behaviour?

I've been looking at neural networks for control applications. Let's say I used an RL algorithm to train a controller for the cart pole balancing problem. Assuming the neural network is simple and ...
james_erikson's user avatar
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1 answer
120 views

Isn't evolutionary theory the essence of intelligence after all? [closed]

The theory of evolution seems to be intelligent as it creates life The mechanism of evolutionary theory consists of mutation, recombination, and natural selection like a genetic algorithm. Isn't this ...
Dimer's user avatar
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1 answer
194 views

Is GPT-3 an early example of strong AI in a narrow setting?

In GPT-2, the large achievement was being able to generate coherent text over a long-form while maintaining context. This was very impressive but for GPT-2 to do new language tasks, it had to be ...
Landon G's user avatar
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1 vote
2 answers
181 views

How is AI helping humanity?

There was a lot of Negative news on Artificial Intelligence. Most people were first exposed to the idea of artificial intelligence from Hollywood movies, long before they ever started seeing it in ...
Pluviophile's user avatar
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14 votes
2 answers
1k views

How does one prove comprehension in machines?

Say we have a machine and we give it a task to do (vision task, language task, game, etc.), how can one prove that a machine actually know's what's going on/happening in that specific task? To narrow ...
Landon G's user avatar
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3 votes
1 answer
344 views

Does Gödel's second incompleteness theorem put a limitation on artificial intelligence systems?

According to Brian Cantwell Smith no calculation without representation Therefore, computers depend on models. So, we can say that AI is limited internally by the model and externally by the ...
alamata's user avatar
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1 vote
0 answers
111 views

What does a self-improving artificial general intelligence with finite resources and infinite time do?

What would happen when an artificial general intelligence can improve itself over a long time, with limited resources? The assumption is that it has a large but finite amount of computing power, and ...
Volker Siegel's user avatar
2 votes
3 answers
2k views

What are the implications of the statement "If you can't tell, does it matter?" in relation to AI?

"If you can't tell, does it matter?" was one of the first lines of dialogue of the Westworld television series, presented as a throwaway in the first episode of the first season, in response ...
DukeZhou's user avatar
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6 votes
4 answers
754 views

Would it be ethical to allow an AI to make life-or-death medical decisions?

Would it be ethical to allow an AI to make life-or-death medical decisions? For instance, where there an insufficient number of ventilators during a respiratory pandemic, not every patient can have ...
DukeZhou's user avatar
  • 6,237
7 votes
2 answers
473 views

Why is creating an AI that can code a hard task?

For people who have experience in the field, why is creating AI that has the ability to write programs (that are syntactically correct and useful) a hard task? What are the barriers/problems we have ...
Landon G's user avatar
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2 votes
1 answer
184 views

What assumptions are made when positing the emergence of superintelligence?

Many experts seem to think that artificial general intelligence, or AGI, (on the level of humans) is possible and likely to emerge in the near-ish future. Some make the further step to say that ...
user35673's user avatar
2 votes
1 answer
62 views

Would a new human-like general artificial intelligence be more similar, in terms of eduction, to a toddler or an adult human?

The naive concept of a general AI, or strong AI, or artificial general intelligence, is some kind of software that can answer questions like What is the volume of a cube that is 1 m wide? or ...
Volker Siegel's user avatar
15 votes
5 answers
3k views

What is the idea called involving an AI that will eventually rule humanity?

It's an idea I heard a while back but couldn't remember the name of. It involves the existence and development of an AI that will eventually rule the world and that if you don't fund or progress the ...
Displaza's user avatar
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3 votes
1 answer
118 views

Is the Cognitive Approach (SOAR) equivalent to the Chinese Room argument?

Soar is a cognitive architecture. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soar_(cognitive_architecture) https://soar.eecs.umich.edu/ There is something called "the Chinese box" or "Chinese room" argument: ...
EngrStudent's user avatar
2 votes
0 answers
193 views

Is an oracle that answers only with a "yes" or "no" dangerous?

I was thinking about the risks of Oracle AI and it doesn't seem as safe to me as Bostrom et al. suggest. From my point of view, even an AGI that only answers questions could have a catastrophic impact....
Yamar69's user avatar
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1 vote
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Use cases for AI inside the software company

This question is a bit philosophic and is about making new use cases for software companies. Let me describe what exist for now, why it is not enough, and what is needed. I know that there are a lot ...
Ilya Palachev's user avatar
2 votes
3 answers
1k views

Can you provide some pseudocode examples of what constitutes an AI?

After years of learning, I still can't understand what is considered to be an AI. What are the requirements for an algorithm to constitute Artificial Intelligence? Can you provide pseudocode examples ...
Zheer's user avatar
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3 votes
4 answers
273 views

How do we define intention if there is no free will?

There is an idea that intentionality may be a requirement of true intelligence, here defined as human intelligence. But all I know for certain is that we have the appearance of free will. Under ...
DukeZhou's user avatar
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8 votes
6 answers
507 views

What event would confirm that we have implemented an AGI system?

I was listening to a podcast on the topic of AGI and a guest made an argument that if strong music generation were to happen, it would be a sign of "true" intelligence in machines because of ...
Landon G's user avatar
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-1 votes
2 answers
273 views

Will AI always depend on models and thus approximations?

In section 3 of the paper The Limits of Correctness (1985) Brian Cantwell Smith writes When you design and build a computer system, you first formulate a model of the problem you want it to solve, ...
alamata's user avatar
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1 vote
2 answers
103 views

Can we just switch off a malicious artificial intelligence?

Let us assume we have a general AI that can improve itself and is at least as intelligent as humans. It has wide access to technical systems including the internet, and it can communicate with humans....
Volker Siegel's user avatar
14 votes
2 answers
2k views

Why is reinforcement learning not the answer to AGI?

I previously asked a question about How can an AI freely make decisions?. I got a great answer about how current algorithms lack agency. The first thing I thought of was reinforcement learning, since ...
joethemow's user avatar
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8 votes
3 answers
2k views

How can an AI freely make decisions?

Suppose a deep neural network is created using Keras or Tensorflow. Usually, when you want to make a prediction, the user would invoke model.predict. However, how ...
joethemow's user avatar
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5 votes
1 answer
170 views

Could AI kill the joy of competitive sports and games?

Lee Sedol, former world champion, and legendary Go player today announced his retirement with the quote "Even if I become the No. 1, there is an entity that cannot be defeated". Is it possible that ...
Vildemort's user avatar
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4 votes
1 answer
153 views

How important is learning to learn for the development of AGI?

Some people say that abstract thinking, intuition, common sense, and understanding cause and effect are important to make AGI. How important is learning to learn for the development of AGI?
loopy_fun's user avatar
8 votes
8 answers
1k views

Is artificial intelligence really just human intelligence?

Essentially, AI is created by human minds, so is the intelligence & creativity of algorithms properly an extension of human intelligence & creativity, rather than something independent? I ...
DukeZhou's user avatar
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0 votes
1 answer
74 views

Do algorithms like OpenAI's "think up strategies"?

I was discussing with a friend whether current AI does anything remotely similar to 'thinking' and he argued that AIs that play games must think up strategies. While thinking may not be precisely ...
Frans Rodenburg's user avatar
2 votes
1 answer
110 views

What are some books/papers that deal with fundamental and philosophical issues of ML and relate it to the global discourse of AIs?

In my experience, most of the time, when people talk about AI nowadays they mostly mean machine learning. Despite this, ML is usually seen as a mere technique to build high-performance software. I ...
olinarr's user avatar
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3 votes
4 answers
143 views

What are the risks associated with regulating AI?

As part of a research project for college, I would like to understand what many of you astern to be the risks associated with regulating Artificial Intelligence. Such as whether regulation is too ...
JsAdam's user avatar
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3 votes
1 answer
269 views

What are examples of thought experiments against or in favour of strong AI, apart from the Chinese room argument?

The Chinese Room argument against strong AI overlooks the fact that "the man in the room" is acting as a macro-scale "neurotransmitter" of the larger system in which he resides. It does not rule out ...
respectful's user avatar
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2 votes
1 answer
97 views

Why is awareness of itself such a point when speaking about AI?

Why is awareness of itself such a point when speaking about AI? Does it always mean a starting point for apocalyptic nightmares to occur when such a level is reached or is it just a classical example ...
mico's user avatar
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48 votes
19 answers
16k views

Can digital computers understand infinity?

As a human being, we can think infinity. In principle, if we have enough resources (time etc.), we can count infinitely many things (including abstract, like numbers, or real). For example, at least, ...
verdery's user avatar
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2 votes
0 answers
107 views

Should AI be mortal by design? [closed]

There are the 3 Asimov’s laws: A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. A robot must obey orders given to it by human beings, except where such ...
LLub's user avatar
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1 vote
2 answers
47 views

Does it matter if it's a bot or a human generating text? Doesn't it come down to the content?

It was noted today that automated text generation is advancing at a rapid pace, potentially accelerating. As bots become more and more capable of passing turing tests, especially in single iterations,...
DukeZhou's user avatar
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4 votes
3 answers
1k views

Is randomness necessary for AI?

Is randomness (either true randomness or simulated randomness) necessary for AI? If true, does it mean "intelligence comes from randomness"? If not, can a robot lacking the ability to generate random ...
lambda's user avatar
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58 votes
13 answers
11k views

How could artificial intelligence harm us?

We often hear that artificial intelligence may harm or even kill humans, so it might prove dangerous. How could artificial intelligence harm us?
Manak's user avatar
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