Selmer Bringsjord – författare

"What Robots Can and Can't Be" is a self-contained argument for the unique, two-sided position that (side One) AI will continue to produce machines with greater and greater capacity to pass stronger and stronger versions of the Turing Test; but that (side Two) the "Person Building Project" (the attempt by cognitive engineers to build a machine which is a person) will inevitably fail. The defence of side Two rests in large part on a refutation of the proposition that persons are automata - a refutation involving an array of issues, from free will to Godel to introspection to Searle and beyond. The defence of side One brings the reader face to face with Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson as they tackle perhaps their toughest case (Silver Blaze); the upshot of this visit with Conan Doyle's duo is an algorithm-sketch for the solving of murder mysteries. Side Two also involves a look at the author's mechanical approach to writing fiction, and the philosophical side of computerized story generation.

Is human creativity a wall that AI can never scale? Many people are happy to admit that experts in many domains can be matched by either knowledge-based or sub-symbolic systems, but even some AI researchers harbor the hope that when it comes to feats of sheer brilliance, mind over machine is an unalterable fact. In this book, the authors push AI toward a time when machines can autonomously write not just humdrum stories of the sort seen for years in AI, but first-rate fiction thought to be the province of human genius. It reports on five years of effort devoted to building a story generator--the BRUTUS.1 system. This book was written for three general reasons. The first theoretical reason for investing time, money, and talent in the quest for a truly creative machine is to work toward an answer to the question of whether we ourselves are machines. The second theoretical reason is to silence those who believe that logic is forever closed off from the emotional world of creativity. The practical rationale for this endeavor, and the third reason, is that machines able to work alongside humans in arenas calling for creativity will have incalculable worth.

Is human creativity a wall that AI can never scale? Many people are happy to admit that experts in many domains can be matched by either knowledge-based or sub-symbolic systems, but even some AI researchers harbor the hope that when it comes to feats of sheer brilliance, mind over machine is an unalterable fact. In this book, the authors push AI toward a time when machines can autonomously write not just humdrum stories of the sort seen for years in AI, but first-rate fiction thought to be the province of human genius. It reports on five years of effort devoted to building a story generator--the BRUTUS.1 system. This book was written for three general reasons. The first theoretical reason for investing time, money, and talent in the quest for a truly creative machine is to work toward an answer to the question of whether we ourselves are machines. The second theoretical reason is to silence those who believe that logic is forever closed off from the emotional world of creativity. The practical rationale for this endeavor, and the third reason, is that machines able to work alongside humans in arenas calling for creativity will have incalculable worth.

Vigorously demonstrating the relevance of reasoning to important moral problems, the participants in this dialogue resist the temptations of strident emotional appeal in an effort to present the most honorable and intellectually sophisticated sides of their arguments. This effort leads them to consideration of ante-bellum slavery, to a comparison of the notions of absolute truth in ethics versus mathematics, and to constructive discussions of genetics, artificial intelligence, euthanasia, personal identity, human sexuality, and Roe v. Wade.

This is a book-length presentation of a theory of human and machine cognition, according to which human persons are superminds. Superminds are capable of processing information not only at and below the level of Turing machines (standard computers), but above that level (the "Turing Limit"), as information processing devices that have not yet been (and perhaps can never be) built, but have been mathematically specified; these devices are known as super-Turing machines or hypercomputers. Superminds, as explained herein, also have properties no machine, whether above or below the Turing Limit, can have. The final chapter of this book offers eight prescriptions for the concrete practice of AI and cognitive science in light of the fact that we are superminds.

This is a book-length presentation of a theory of human and machine cognition, according to which human persons are superminds. Superminds are capable of processing information not only at and below the level of Turing machines (standard computers), but above that level (the "Turing Limit"), as information processing devices that have not yet been (and perhaps can never be) built, but have been mathematically specified; these devices are known as super-Turing machines or hypercomputers. Superminds, as explained herein, also have properties no machine, whether above or below the Turing Limit, can have. The final chapter of this book offers eight prescriptions for the concrete practice of AI and cognitive science in light of the fact that we are superminds.

This book provides the logic-based path by which humanity can neutralize the existential threat posed by machines that are at once powerful, autonomous, intelligent, and potentially immoral. The path is made clear by analysis of four Star Trek TOS episodes in which malevolent, destructive machines are thwarted by logic. Anyone who wishes to ward off a future in which humanity is harmed or even outright destroyed by AI, or perhaps even wishes to directly contribute to this warding off, is a member of the book’s intended audience.