Posthuman

Why You Should Care That Artificial Intelligence Can Lie (Part 2)

If you haven’t already, please read Part 1 of “Why You Should Care That Artificial Intelligence Can Lie” before continuing, because I’m picking up in this post where I left off in the last one. Again, the concern here is whether or not robots (AI systems) can lie. As I demonstrated in Part 1, there…

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Why You Should Care That Artificial Intelligence Can Lie (Part 1)

Many people, myself included, are willing to affirm the near-future possibility of artificial general intelligence (AGI), or machines capable of performing all of the cognitive functions normally associated with human minds. The most important of these capabilities, not yet achieved by our extant “narrow” AI, is consciousness (sometimes, problematically, called “self-awareness”): an imprecise, indefinite, and…

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Five Reasons Why I Am A Techno-Optimist

Since I posted my list of tech book recommendations a few weeks ago, several people have asked me to explain why I describe myself as a “techno-optimist.” I get this question a lot, so I thought I’d take the opportunity to give a quick account (and defense) of my position. But, first, a few preliminary remarks about…

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Humanity: How To Tell Your Students They’re The End Of It

For the last couple of semesters, I’ve been trying to introduce my students, in as gentle and nonthreatening a manner as possible, to the idea that they may very well be the last of “humanity” as we know it.  This has not been a well-received speculative proposition. In my defense, I really make an effort…

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