Curated playlist
Philosophy of artificial intelligence
- Moravec's paradoxMoravec's paradox is one of the most counterintuitive findings to emerge from decades of artificial intelligence research. A computer can beat grandmasters at chess, solve advanced algebra, and pass intelligence tests at an adult level.…
- AI alignmentAI alignment is the effort to steer artificial intelligence toward the goals its designers actually intend, not toward goals that only look right on paper. In 2024, researchers found that Claude 3 Opus, a large language model, would…
- GOFAIGOFAI, short for good old-fashioned artificial intelligence, is a term the philosopher John Haugeland introduced in 1985, in his book Artificial Intelligence: The Very Idea. Haugeland used it to name classical symbolic AI, the approach set…
- Philosophy of artificial intelligenceThe philosophy of artificial intelligence sits at a crossroads that has puzzled thinkers for centuries: what exactly is a mind, and could a machine ever have one? In 1950, computer scientist Alan Turing proposed a deceptively simple test.…
- Technological singularityThe technological singularity is a hypothetical event in which technological growth accelerates so far beyond human control that civilization itself becomes unpredictable. Imagine a machine that, once built, is smarter than any human who…
- Computing Machinery and IntelligenceIn 1950, Alan Turing published a paper in the journal Mind that opened with three words that would echo through the following decades: "Can machines think?" Turing himself immediately acknowledged the problem. The words "think" and…
- TranshumanismTranshumanism is a philosophical movement built on a single, startling conviction: that the human condition is not fixed. In 1923, the British geneticist J. B. S. Haldane predicted that every advance in applying science to human biology…
- Hubert DreyfusHubert Dreyfus walked into the RAND Corporation in 1964 with a commission that seemed routine: review the latest work in artificial intelligence. What he produced instead was a document described as "famously combative" that would make him…
- Dartmouth workshopOn the 2nd of September 1955, four scientists put their names to a document that would change the course of computing. John McCarthy, Marvin Minsky, Nathaniel Rochester, and Claude Shannon formally proposed what they called the Dartmouth…
- Fairness (machine learning)Fairness in machine learning is a field driven by specific, documented harms. In 2016, ProPublica published an analysis of COMPAS software, used by US courts to predict whether defendants would reoffend. The finding was pointed: black…
- Stochastic parrotThe phrase 'stochastic parrot' was barely known when Timnit Gebru received a fateful email from Google on the 2nd of December 2020. The message informed her that the company was accepting her resignation. Gebru had never submitted one. She…
- Turing testThe Turing test asks a deceptively simple question: can a machine think? Alan Turing posed that question in his 1950 paper "Computing Machinery and Intelligence," opening with words that would echo for decades: "I propose to consider the…
- Chinese roomIn the Chinese room, slips of paper pass under a door. John Searle, an American philosopher, sits inside with pencils, erasers, and filing cabinets. He reads Chinese characters on each slip, consults an English-language program, and slides…
- Computational creativityComputational creativity sits at the crossing of artificial intelligence, cognitive psychology, philosophy, and the arts. The central question it asks is deceptively simple: can a machine be creative? And behind that question lurks a…
- Hallucination (artificial intelligence)AI hallucination is the tendency of artificial intelligence systems to generate false or misleading information presented as fact. Professor Ethan Mollick of Wharton put it memorably. He called ChatGPT an "omniscient, eager-to-please…