MULTIVERSES

AI can do many things equally well as humans: such as writing plausible prose or answering exam questions. In certain domains, AI goes far beyond human capabilities — playing chess for instance.We might expect that nothing prevents machines from one day besting humans at every task. Indeed, it is often asserted that, in principle, everything (and more) within the range of human cognition will one day fall within the ken of AI.But what if there are concepts and ways of thinking that are off-limits to any machine, yet not so for humans? Selmer Bringsjord, Professor in Cognitive Science at RPI joins us this week and argues we need to rethink human thought.Selmer argues that humans have been able to grasp problems that machines cannot — humans are capable of hypercomputation. Hypercomputation is computation above the Turing limit, as such it can solve problems beyond the power of any machine we can currently conceive.In particular, Turing computation cannot encompass infinitary logic, yet humans have been able to reason effectively about the infinite. Similarly, Gödel’s theorem points to a class of riddles machines cannot reach, yet human genius has identified.This is a huge topic, accepting Selmer’s arguments entails accepting that human minds work in a way that evades our understanding — their mechanisms obeying mechanics of which we are wholly ignorant.Whether or not you agree with Selmer’s conclusions, this is a brilliant exploration of the boundaries of thought.Links Selmer's Academic Homepage RPI AI and Reasoning Lab (RAIR)

There is no consensus on what minds are, but there is plenty of agreement on where they can be found: in humans. Yet human consciousness may account for only a small proportion of the consciousness on our planet. Our guest, Kristin Andrews, is a Professor of Animal Minds at the University of York, Ontario, Canada. She is a philosopher working in close contact with biologists and cognitive scientists and has spent time living in the jungle to observe research on orangutans. Kristin notes that comparative psychology has historically resisted attributing such things as intentions, learning, consciousness, and minds to animals. Yet she argues that this is misguided in the light of the evidence, that often the best way to make sense of the complexity of animal behavior is to invoke minds and intentional concepts. Recently Kristin has proposed that the default assumption — the null hypothesis — should be that animals have minds. Currently, biologists examine markers of consciousness on a species-by-species basis, for example looking for the presence of pain receptor skills, and preferential tradeoffs in behavior. But everywhere we have looked, even in tiny nematode worms, we find multiple markers present. Kristin reasons that switching the focus from asking "where are the minds?" to "what sort of minds are there?" would prove more fruitful. The question of consciousness and AI is at the forefront of popular discourse, but to make progress on a scientific theory of mind we should draw on the richer data of the natural world. Kristin's website has links to her books and papers. As an introduction to her thinking How To Study Animal Minds is a gem of a book.

Things happen. Or they don’t. How then should we make sense of claims that something might happen?If all these claims do is express doubt, then the puzzle can be easily resolved. But if the claims capture some objective feature of the world, what is it?Our guest is Alastair Wilson, a professor of philosophy at the University of Leeds. He takes chance seriously, in particular, he is a realist about our modal claims (claims like “either candidate could win” or “if Szilard hadn’t got Spanish flu, the atom bomb would not have been invented”) may be true or false, not just opinions or expressions of ignorance.Alastair does this by connecting our modal talk to Everettian quantum mechanics. He argues that modal claims are assertions about the many worlds within the universal wavefunction. If in all worlds where Szilard did not succumb to Spanish flu, the atom bomb was never invented, then this claim would be true.It is a bold and fascinating way of bringing physics and metaphysics together. What can happen, what is possible, what could have been? These become questions for natural science. Alastair's website Nature of Contingency: Quantum Physics as Modal Realism

The launch of ChatGPT was a "Sputnik moment". In making tangible decades of progress it shot AI to the fore of public consciousness. This attention is accelerating AI development as dollars are poured into scaling models. What is the next stage in this journey? And where is the destination? My guest this week, Nell Watson, offers a broad perspective on the possible trajectories. She sits in several IEEE groups looking at AI Ethics, safety & transparency, has founded AI companies, and is a consultant to Apple on philosophical matters. Nell makes a compelling case that we can expect to see agentic AI being soon adopted widely. We might even see whole AI corporations. In the context of these possible developments, she reasons that concerns of AI ethics and safety — so often siloed within different communities — should be understood as continuous. Along the way we talk about the perils of hamburgers and the good things that could come from networking our minds. Links Nell's book: Taming The Machine: Ethically Harness The Power Of AI Multiverses home