Not Your Parents’ AI (Especially if your Parents are Functionalists)

by Tim Sommers The Theory of Mind That Says Artificial Intelligence is Possible Does your dog feel pain? Or your cat? Surely, nonhuman great apes do. Dolphins feel pain, right? What about octopuses? (That’s right, “octopuses” not “octopi.”)They seem to be surprisingly intelligent and to exhibit pain-like behavior – even though the last common ancestor…

Terrible AI Arguments (and, No, AIs Will Not be Recursively Self-Improving on Computer-Like Time Scales)

by Tim Sommers (The butter robot realizing the sole purpose of its existence is to pass the butter.) In the halcyon days of “self-driving cars are six months away,” you probably encountered this argument. “If self-driving cars work, they will be safer than cars driven by humans.” Sure. If, by “they work,” you mean that,…

Top 10 Reasons Experts Should Not Debate Nonexperts (plus a postscript on “Standing”)

by Tim Sommers Back in June, Dr. Peter J. Hotez, an expert on neglected tropical diseases and vaccines, made a splash when he categorically refused to participate in a public debate on vaccines with vaccine-denier Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. on Joe Rogan’s podcast. Dr. Hotez had been on Rogan’s show before, more than once, and…

Are Counterfeit People the Most Dangerous Artifacts in Human History?

by Tim Sommers Widely-respected philosopher, Tufts professor, one of the “Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse” of the New Atheists’ movement, and an “External Professor” for the prestigious Santa Fe Institute, Daniel Dennett recently took to the very public soap box of The Atlantic to issue a dire warning. “Today, for the first time in history, thanks to…

Is Moral Equality a Christian Idea?

by Tim Sommers “Mankind was first taught to stammer the proposition of equality” – “Everyone is equal to everyone else” – “In a religious context, and only later was it made into morality,” Nietzsche wrote. Elsewhere, he called “human equality,” or “moral equality,” a specifically “Christian concept, no less crazy [than the soul],” moral equality…