"What will become of us?"

Just in time for our discussion of Alan Turing (and anticipating Jamil's talk on the 29th, H2), Sunday's New York Times magazine features our really vital question*-What will become of us? How technology is changing what it means to be human...
 

For years, A.I. programmers fixated on passing the Turing Test — the famous challenge floated by Alan Turing in 1950 to produce a machine that can fool a human into thinking it is also human. Sci-fi has made dystopic hay of this in movies like “Blade Runner” and “Ex Machina.” But the world that’s emerging is simultaneously more mundane and stranger. None of this software is trying to fool us. Bots like Siri or Microsoft’s Cortana are, like Woebot, openly artificial, even proudly so. (When I asked Alexa “Are you alive?” it responded: “Artificially, maybe, but not in the same way that you’re alive.”) We are thus heading into a post-Turing world, one in which we’ll banter all day to software, always aware that it is software... "May A.I. Help You?"

One reason botmakers are embracing artificiality is that the Turing Test turns out to be incredibly difficult to pass. Human conversation is full of idioms, metaphors and implied knowledge: Recognizing that the expression “It’s raining cats and dogs” isn’t actually about cats and dogs, for example, surpasses the reach of chatbots. Few A.I. pioneers think we’re anywhere close to the promise of the movie “Her,” in which a bot is so convincing that its user falls in love with it. So for now, botmakers manage expectations by leaning into the artifice. This poses a challenge that is, in a way, more interesting than the Turing Test: What type of personality should bots have, when both we and they know they’re not human? (continues)

Also in this issue:
The Human Brain Is a Time Traveler

“What best distinguishes our species,” (Martin) Seligman wrote in a Times Op-Ed with John Tierney, “is an ability that scientists are just beginning to appreciate: We contemplate the future.” He went on: “A more apt name for our species would be Homo prospectus, because we thrive by considering our prospects. The power of prospection is what makes us wise.”
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* “The really vital question for us all is, What is this world going to be? What is life eventually to make of itself?” William James
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Augmented reality, asks Nigel, or diminished?
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This American Life: interesting approach to free will/determinism ... but the reporter thinks of his wife and children (and himself!) as "robots"!! https://www.thisamericanlife.org/662/where-there-is-a-will/act-two-2
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Alison Gopnik on The Hidden Brain...

"The idea is that if you just do the right things, get the right skills, read the right books, you're going to be able to shape your child into a particular kind of adult," she says.

But, she says, this view doesn't align with the research on children's development. In her latest book, The Gardener and the Carpenter, Alison lays out an alternative way to think about the relationship between parents and children...

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Also on The Hidden Brain:
...some questions that carry big implications: can you put an economic value on a great kindergarten teacher? How is it that two children living just a few blocks from each other can have radically different chances in life? What gives Salt Lake City an edge over Cleveland when it comes to offering people better prospects than their parents? The state of your American Dream... Zipcode Destiny: The Persistent Power Of Place And Education
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Herbert Fingarette (1921-2018) -

...He enrolled at the University of California intending to major in chemistry, but most of his experiments were flops. He was drafted into the Army and, after serving during World War II, mostly at the Pentagon, returned to the university. There he was captivated by a Bertrand Russell lecture on David Hume and decided to major in philosophy, earning a bachelor’s degree in 1947 and a doctorate in 1949...

“Never in my life will I experience death,” he wrote. “I will never know an end to my life, this life of mine right here on earth.” He added: “People hope never to know the end of consciousness. But why merely hope? It’s a certainty. They never will!”

In other words, he agreed with Epicurus.
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And if you missed it: Thursday was World Philosophy Day... "Who studies philosophy?"-you might be surprised...
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Arts & Letters Daily search results for “artificial intelligence” (8)

2012-11-17 | Noam Chomsky vs. artificial intelligence. Algorithms are well and good, but are practical applications obscuring scientific potential? more »

2016-12-07 | Artificial intelligence meets Balzac. Computers can now detect sentiment, irony, and character type. How much longer until they're producing literature? more »

2017-02-22 | The idea of intelligence has justified slavery, oppression, eugenics. No wonder the prospect of artificial intelligence fills us with dread more »

2017-06-14 | Futurists dismiss religion but anoint “evangelists” of technology and “oracles” of artificial intelligence. Are futurists really as atheistic as they think? more »

2018-02-16 | A robot Rembrandt? Artificial intelligence cannot yet make fine art. When it can, the results will be both painfully boring and beyond our wildest imagination more »

2018-05-19 | The Enlightenment started with philosophical insights spread by a new technology. We face a dominant technology — artificial intelligence — in search of a philosophy more »

2018-04-27 | Worried that artificial intelligence will eclipse human intelligence? Rest easy, says Steven Pinker. Such scenarios falsely assume that intelligence implies a will to power more »

2018-06-25 | If artificial intelligence ever produces a sentient machine capable of engaging in conversation, it will most likely be a machine no one will want to talk with more »
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After losing to "Watson" on Jeopardy, Ken Jennings scribbled a phrase from The Simpsons on his answer board and held it up for the cameras. It read: “I for one welcome our new robot Overlords.” A World of Technological Unemployment Ken Jennings' crack was as neat a summary as you could hope for when it comes to dealing with one of the perceived dark sides of Artificial Intelligence...