Monthly Archives: July 2011
Aristotle in neural networks
Aristotle, in his zoological opus Historia Animalium (The history of animals), launches into his analysis of the animal kingdom by observing differences and similarities between the species. For example, he observes that bats and birds both have wings, so he … Continue reading
Filed under Philosophy, Technologies
Ghosts in the machines
The Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget noted that in children’s’ minds there is an implicit understanding of the world in which all events are the product of consciousness or intention. Things happen for a reason and never by chance. Piaget’s discovery … Continue reading
Filed under Brain and consciousness
Dreaming of electric sheep
Renown neurobiologists Christof Koch and Giulio Tononi recently suggested an alternative Turing Test to examine whether an intelligent machine is conscious or not: instead of having a human-machine conversation they propose a psychological test where the machine decides through a … Continue reading
Filed under Brain and consciousness
“Brain-like” computers
Most digital computers are built on a simple, albeit revolutionary, principle suggested by Alan Turing in 1936 whereby data and instruction sets (the “programs”) are stored together (in your “Hard Disk”) whilst information processing takes place separately (in your “RAM … Continue reading
Filed under Technologies, The Future
Making Intelligent Machines
The goal of Artificial Intelligence (AI) is usually described as the making of intelligent machines. This may seem like a well-defined goal however AI has been plagued with misunderstandings and misgivings since its modern reinvention in the 1950s. The word … Continue reading
Filed under Philosophy
The “uncanny valley”
There is a feeling we humans get when confronted with human-like artifacts. The more human-like the artifact the more we tend to like it. Think dolls or mechanical robots. But when these artifacts start to look much more like human … Continue reading
Filed under News, Technologies
Cyborg evolution
Augmenting physical ability by making use of techno-prostheses is as instinctive to primates as the sticks that some chimpanzees use to extract termites from their nests. The whole edifice of technological civilization has been exactly that, to implement knowledge collected … Continue reading
Filed under Philosophy, The Future
Downloading Consciousness
Frank Tipler, in his new book “The Physics of Christianity” makes a number of interesting – some would even say amusing – claims with regards the “end of days”, as he sees it. I would like to focus on two … Continue reading
Filed under Philosophy, The Future
The Word Machine of Lagado
Jonathan Swift published the first edition of Gulliver’s Travels in 1726 and since then it has never been out of print. In Book III, Gulliver is abandoned by pirates on the continent of Balnibarbi. After a visit to the flying islandof Laputa, he … Continue reading
Filed under Cultural roots
