Confessions of a Conservative Atheist
Living proof marijuana doesn't kill brain cells…
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
Next generation chat software that delivers a more realistic conversational experience, can do research, and write stories has set the technology and media worlds on fire, but beneath the surface ChatGPT reveals one of the things that makes human intelligence so unique. We have physics built into our brain by evolution. The technology and media… Continue reading ChatGPT and the physics evolution built into our brains
According to some experts, everything is sentient these days, from computers to honey bees, but this is a radical redefinition of a term once applied to humans and perhaps a few of our close relatives. Sentience used to require awareness and understanding. Suddenly, merely adaptive behavior will do as activists start calling for insect rights,… Continue reading The insanity of claiming everything is sentient and the collective delusions of modern scientists
After a Google engineer declares the company’s latest creation is a conscious and sentient machine, The Washington Post claims the Turing Test for Artificial Intelligence is broken, measuring merely deception. Both are incorrect in different ways as Turing’s genius remains applicable and relevant. Last month, The Washington Post proclaimed that Google’s latest natural language software,… Continue reading No, Google’s LaMDA isn’t sentient and didn’t pass the Turing Test
It took close to 350 years for mathematics and philosophy to catch up with the ideas about the human mind explored in Shakespeare’s classic tragedy. From computer science to the study of language, the opacity of other minds remains at the forefront of our understanding of each other and at the center of Iago’s scheming… Continue reading Shakespeare’s Othello, the Turing Test for Artificial Intelligence, and the indeterminacy of radical translation
Confessions of a Conservative Atheist 