Dennett on AI and Philosophy

Naveen Sundar — Wed, 20 Apr 2011 15:08:25 +0000

Found this hilarious quote by Dennett while reading Rapaport’s paper “Logical Foundations for Belief Representation”

Philosophers, I have said, should study AI. Should AI workers study philos- ophy? Yes, unless they are content to reinvent the wheel every few days. When AI reinvents a wheel, it is typically square, or at best hexagonal, and can only make a few hundred revolutions before it stops. Philosopher’s wheels, on the other hand, are perfect circles, require in principle no lubrication, and can go in at least two directions at once. Clearly a meeting of minds is in order. (p. 126)

Pathetic fallacy

Naveen Sundar — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 06:26:28 +0000

This fallacy seems common with old strong AI and the lolcat culture.

Irrationality of Induction

Naveen Sundar — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 18:54:24 +0000

Some more resources on the problem of induction

1. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/induction-problem/
2. A more recent paper :”Some remarks on the Rationality of Induction“
http://www.springerlink.com/content/nj6j1124r18q70m3/

The Problem of Induction

Naveen Sundar — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 20:23:15 +0000

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Problem_of_induction

Goals of Rational Atheists

Naveen Sundar — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 02:13:35 +0000

What do “rational” atheists want in life? Most religious people (atleast in principle) have some notion of an after-life goal, and most irrational people have, well…, “irrational” goals which need not make any sense. Won’t it make more sense for rational atheists to be hedonists? This leads to the comical image of people having wires stuck in the pleasure centers of their brain.

Solomonoff on AI

Naveen Sundar — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 17:54:07 +0000

“To start, I’d like to deﬁne the scope of my interest in A.I. I am not particularly interested in simulating human behavior. I am interested in creating a machine that can work very diﬃcult problems much better and/or faster than humans can — and this machine should be embodied in a technology to which Moore’s Law applies. I would like it to give a better understanding of the relation of quantum mechanics to general relativity. I would like it to discover cures for cancer and AIDS. I would like it to ﬁnd some very good high temperature superconductors. I would not be disappointed if it were unable to pass itself oﬀ as a rock star.” -Ray J. Solomonoﬀ. (One of the early researchers in Machine Learning.)
http://world.std.com/~rjs/dart.pdf

While a cure for AIDS, in the short term, is much more worthy than simulating human behavior, the latter is much much much more difficult than the former because simulating human behavior entails creating a system which can cure AIDS !

Perspective

Naveen Sundar — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 15:46:47 +0000

http://www.worldwithoutus.com/did_you_know.html

String Theory

Naveen Sundar — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 23:23:50 +0000

Physicists claim that music composed on strings vibrating through 10 dimensions is the mind of god. I am pretty sure in a thousand years String Theory will look like what the “Theory of Five Elements” look to us now. Anybody who disagrees with my last statement won’t be remembered in a thousand years

Strings are the new earth, water, fire, air and ether .

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_elements

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elementary_particle

Printing Press, Science and AI

Naveen Sundar — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 16:20:02 +0000

Present day scientists can be compared to people who copied books before the invention of the printing press. They were revered but were just doing a simple task (copying texts by hand) which was mechanized by the printing press. Similarly most of current day scientific work is mechanizable by very trivial AI (may take decades to achieve). A current PhD quality and quantity of work could be completed in very short time by such machines.

Robot Scientist: http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/04/robotscientist/

Purpose of Sapience

Naveen Sundar — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 22:54:23 +0000

Is it to expand sapience?