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Saints & Simulators 18: #Gaia

June 20, 2019 by Chris Sunami Leave a Comment

Eighteenth in an ongoing series on the nexus between religion and technology. The previous essay is here; the next essay is here. The reason, perhaps, that Professor Nick Bostrom’s demonstration of the probability of God’s existence has received so little attention and notice (especially as compared to the stir and commotion caused by his demonstration of the probability  Continue Reading …

Saints & Simulators 16: #ScaryAI (Roko’s Basilisk)

May 30, 2019 by Chris Sunami 1 Comment

Sixteenth in an ongoing series about the interface between religion and technology. The previous episode is here; the next episode is here. In 1969, philosopher Robert Nozick first popularized what would go on to be quite a famous thought experiment. Soon known as "Newcomb’s Paradox," after its inventor, physicist William Newcomb, it asks us to imagine two boxes, one of  Continue Reading …

Saints & Simulators 9: #ChaosAndEmergence

March 21, 2019 by Chris Sunami Leave a Comment

Ninth in an ongoing series about the places where science and religion meet. The previous episode is here. The paired opposite to reductionism is called emergentism, and in recent years it has begun to gain an increasing number of advocates. In summary, it means that the whole is more than the sum of its parts. Unexpected behaviors and properties can emerge, even from simple  Continue Reading …

Saints & Simulators 8: #ArtificiallyIntelligent

March 14, 2019 by Chris Sunami 2 Comments

Eighth in an ongoing series about the places where science and religion meet. The previous episode is here. At this point we have delayed the crux of the matter long enough. At root, Bostrom’s argument hinges on a single controversial question: Is it possible to truly create or simulate a person? Is there any point, with any level of technology, no matter how advanced, at  Continue Reading …

Saints & Simulators 7: #GoingBayesian

March 7, 2019 by Chris Sunami Leave a Comment

Seventh in an ongoing series about the places where science and religion meet. The previous episode is here. We left off last week with the question of how much weight we should give to Nick Bostrom’s argument that we are not only possibly simulated, but likely to be so. This argument, or at least our representation of it, rests on two key claims: first, that our descendants  Continue Reading …

Bonus: (sub)Text #3: Spielberg’s “AI: Artificial Intelligence”: What Is It to Be Human? (Part One)

September 2, 2018 by Wes Alwan 2 Comments

For Episode 3 of (sub)Text, Wes discusses Steven Spielberg's AI: Artificial Intelligence with David Kyle Johnson, philosophy professor at King’s College in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. Note: Part two will NOT be appearing on this feed. Become a PEL Citizen to get the full discussion. Visit partiallyexaminedlife.com/support to learn how. You’ll find David's Great Courses  Continue Reading …

(sub)Text #3: Spielberg’s “AI: Artificial Intelligence”: What Is It to Be Human? (Citizens Only)

September 2, 2018 by Wes Alwan 5 Comments

For Episode 3 of (sub)Text, Wes discusses Steven Spielberg's AI: Artificial Intelligence with David Kyle Johnson, philosophy professor at King’s College in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. You’ll find his Great Courses lectures here, including a course on Science Fiction as Philosophy. Philosophers are wont to talk about artificial intelligence in terms of thinking and  Continue Reading …

How Moral Is the Moral Machine?

August 31, 2016 by Ana Sandoiu 2 Comments

A 2012 article in the New Yorker reads:  With or without robotic soldiers, what we really need is a sound way to teach our machines to be ethical. The trouble is that we have almost no idea how to do that. Four years later, the guys at MIT may have found an answer: through crowd-sourcing. The Moral Machine is introduced by its creators as "a platform for getting a human  Continue Reading …

The ‘Deus’ in ‘Ex Machina’

May 27, 2015 by Wes Alwan 3 Comments

Subscribe to more of my writing at https://www.wesalwan.com Follow me on Twitter What does the film Ex Machina have to do the deus ex machina as plot device? For one thing, the film includes an implied reflection on how the human drama will end. Would the advent of conscious machines aid humanity, even save it, by leading to the kind of super-intelligence that we can  Continue Reading …

Historical File 12-1

March 21, 2015 by John Ludders 5 Comments

“Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship.” - Romans 12:1 It’s not news that The Matrix is littered with biblical references.  It’s also not news that the second and third movies are terrible. But, there is a Matrix supplement that is the best  Continue Reading …

The Creation of a Superintelligence and the End of Inquiry

January 23, 2015 by Billie Pritchett 9 Comments

Nick Bostrom's Superintelligence is a book that imagines how we should go about dealing with a super-AI, should it come about. The thesis of the book seems to be this: if a superintelligence were to be constructed, there would be certain dangers we'd want to apprise ourselves of and prepare ourselves for, and the book is a precis, essentially, for dealing with some of those  Continue Reading …

Episode 108: Dangers of A.I. with Guest Nick Bostrom

January 6, 2015 by Mark Linsenmayer 48 Comments

On Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies (2014) with author Nick Bostrom, a philosophy professor at Oxford. Just grant the hypothetical that machine intelligence advances will eventually produce a machine capable of further improving itself, and becoming much smarter than we are. Put aside the question of whether such a being could in principle be conscious or  Continue Reading …

Episode 108: Dangers of A.I. with Guest Nick Bostrom (Citizen Edition)

January 6, 2015 by Mark Linsenmayer Leave a Comment

On Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies (2014) with author Nick Bostrom, a philosophy professor at Oxford. Just grant the hypothetical that machine intelligence advances will eventually produce a machine capable of further improving itself, and becoming much smarter than we are. Put aside the question of whether such a being could in principle be conscious or  Continue Reading …

Topic for #108: Dangers of A.I. with Guest Nick Bostrom

December 25, 2014 by Mark Linsenmayer 26 Comments

On 12/7/14, Dylan and I had a conversation with Oxford philosopher Nick Bostrom about his new book Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies. We were also joined by former podcaster Luke Muehlhauser (Conversations from the Pale Blue Dot), whose organization often works with Nick and coordinates an ongoing reading group on the book. Nick's Future of Humanity Institute  Continue Reading …

A Lagging, Nagging Take on Her

September 5, 2014 by Jay Jeffers 6 Comments

Her got a lot of attention during its run in theaters. It even captured the attention of philosophers, no doubt because of the movie’s focus on artificial intelligence, a fixation of philosophy for at least as long as the term has been in our common vernacular. Released on DVD back in the spring, the movie received mostly (but not exclusively) positive reviews. Life in Her  Continue Reading …

Dreyfus on Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, and Artificial Intelligence

December 19, 2011 by Brad Younger 8 Comments

[Brad is a frequent contributor to our Facebook page, so we invited him to post on the blog - welcome him!] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=99iTDUcBuRQ&feature=relmfu I found this to be an interesting video which relates to both the Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty episodes. In the video, Hubert Dreyfus discusses Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, and the philosophical implications for  Continue Reading …

From Technologist to Humanist: Google’s “In-House” Philosopher

July 24, 2011 by Tom McDonald 5 Comments

I had been thinking about the PEL debate on the value of higher education, and came across this compelling story by Damon Horowitz. Did you know that Google has an "in-house philosopher"? Horowitz shares his personal story of self-transformation in this article for the Chronicle of Higher Education. With a background in software engineering, he had developed a career in the  Continue Reading …

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