Confessions of a Conservative Atheist
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For some reason, the experts are claiming we can translate animal speech that doesn’t really exist in the same sense as human speech, and they are proposing to do so with only half the necessary data, the sounds alone without the show, so to speak. Late last year, the Coller Dolittle Prize announced that researchers… Continue reading No, AI cannot translate animal sounds into human speech because animals don’t freaking talk
In a world where computers are creating content, from text to images, video, even writing songs, can they rightly be considered artists, or is there still something that makes humans unique? Today’s Artificial Intelligence software can create new things, generating content that has never been produced before, from the written word to pictures, videos, even… Continue reading Artificial Intelligence, the nature of creativity, and the difference between humans and machines
Can octopuses feel pain and pleasure? What about crabs, shrimp, insects, and spiders? The phrase “thought provoking” is frequently overused, but Professor Jonathan Birch’s new book on animal sentience and what we can do about it deserves the accolade and then some. When I was asked to review an advance copy of Professor Jonathan… Continue reading The Edge of Sentience and the beauty of being wrong
Surprise, surprise, the experts and the media suddenly discover that the internet age and the rise of Artificial Intelligence requires a lot of energy and other natural resources, contributing to global warming and threatening the environment. It’s a common trope in science fiction, one that needs no introduction to anyone familiar with the genre: Computers… Continue reading Computers are killing the planet
You might not ever be gathered with the same people in the same place, not next year, not ever. So this Christmas, sever yourself from the past and the future, stop calculating everything, and simply enjoy it. It may seem like a bad dream only two short years later, but the experts recommended we cancel,… Continue reading This Christmas, celebrate the magic of the moment
Earlier this year, my Facebook feed was suddenly awash with homosexual content for a couple of weeks. Now, it’s on to half naked women, all with no rhyme or reason. The veneer of all powerful technology is mostly false marketing spin or delusions of grandeur... Today’s world is driven by technology, creating the general impression… Continue reading Facebook’s feed is a disaster and our tech overlords are emperors with no clothes
The human race is not on the verge of extinction every time Open AI, Microsoft, or Google launch a new chatbot. AI is not going to cause everyone to die anytime soon, as a recent article in Time Magazine insists, and we should certainly not prioritize firing nuclear weapons to shut down AI research. This… Continue reading Artificial Intelligence alarmists need to grow up and get a grip
More than twenty years ago, Steven Spielberg completed Stanley Kubrick’s final passion project, a film about artificial intelligence and machines that is equal parts prophetic from a modern perspective, uneven as a movie, and unfulfilled as a work of art. Today, everyone is talking about Artificial Intelligence. The emergence of ChatGPT and subsequent competitors capable… Continue reading Spielberg’s thought provoking bastardization of Kubrick, A.I. Artificial Intelligence
Bizarre behavior, dark fantasies about terrorism, claims to have hacked people’s webcams, and actual threats have prompted many to express fear at the face of this new development and some to claim the robots are about to take over the world. The headlines are everywhere, ChatGPT integrated with Microsoft Bing, is on a rampage and… Continue reading ChatGPT is a harmless blowhard not a world-conquering super intelligence
From coding to chess, computers keep outperforming humans at cognitive tasks, revealing a huge gap in our understanding and definition of intelligence. We need to consider what lies between the capabilities of computers today and a hypothetical Artificial General Intelligence. For decades, scientists and philosophers have debated, sometimes rather vigorously, if a computer could ever… Continue reading ChatGPT: We need a new definition of intelligence
Confessions of a Conservative Atheist 