The presumption of materialism lies at the root of much of today’s journalism and speculation about the future of artificial intelligence. Indeed, it has generated volumes and volumes of hype. A materialistic understanding of human abilities like consciousness, creativity, love, and freedom produce two corollary errors: an overestimation of the potential of algorithms and a downgrading of those qualities in humans. In this episode of Great Minds, Michael Medved discusses these inherent limitations of artificial intelligence and the prospects that AI will evolve into something like ourselves.
Speaker: Robert Marks II
Human intelligence sits between fundamental, unbridgeable chasms on either side: animal and artificial intelligence. The capacity for creativity, for one thing, stands permanently outside the reach of algorithms. In a wide-ranging conversation, Robert Marks and Michael Medved tackle questions like what it means for something to be not just unknown but “unknowable.”
Addressing one of today’s most acclaimed technological frontiers, Michael Medved and professor of electrical and computer engineering Robert Marks discuss the limits of artificial intelligence. They begin with definitions — What is a computer? What is an algorithm? — before tackling some pervasive media myths. Can a computer innovate or only imitate? Can computers now really do anything different from the Turing Machine, devised as a model by Alan Turing in the 1930s? Could a computer be programmed to interact with humans like the sinister HAL 9000 in 2001: A Space Odyssey? The answer is yes, says Bob Marks, and whatever flaws such a machine displayed would be the faults inadvertently woven into it by its human programmers.