Aloha from Honolulu! I have vacation brain, so I'll do a summer-themed repost. [Photo from the Bishop Museum malacology exhibit] *************************************Every spring I suffer the Summer Illusion. The following three incompatible propositions all seem to me, in the spring, to be true:(1.) When summer...

I was of three minds, Like a tree In which there are three blackbirds. [from Wallace Stevens, Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird] The literature on superintelligence and AI alignment tends to assume that an intelligent AI will have one set of values, one reward function, and consistent, determinate preferences....

I was of three minds, Like a tree In which there are three blackbirds. [from Wallace Stevens, Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird] The literature on superintelligence and AI alignment tends to assume that an intelligent AI will have one set of values, one reward function, and consistent, determinate preferences....

I don't want to read your AI-generated email. Lots of reasons why, but here's the core of it: I want the text to reflect your thoughts. I want to know that you, the human, actually had those ideas and had them authentically enough to express them in exactly the form I see on the page. For personal emails, I want...

I don't want to read your AI-generated email. Lots of reasons why, but here's the core of it: I want the text to reflect your thoughts. I want to know that you, the human, actually had those ideas and had them authentically enough to express them in exactly the form I see on the page. For personal emails, I want...

Here. Comments welcomed, hoped for, treasured. Over the past couple years I've been working on a pair of books, AI and Consciousness and Humanlike: A Defense of AI Rights. I began circulating AI and Consciousness last fall, and it should appear with Cambridge Elements soon. Both experts' and non-experts' comments...

Here. Comments welcomed, hoped for, treasured. Over the past couple years I've been working on a pair of books, AI and Consciousness and Humanlike: A Defense of AI Rights. I began circulating AI and Consciousness last fall, and it should appear with Cambridge Elements soon. Both experts' and non-experts' comments...

In philosophy of mind, people sometimes say things like the following: If functionalism is true about consciousness, then digital computers could be conscious; all it requires is that they instantiate the right programs. And yes, most functionalists about consciousness do think that. But the claim about digital...

In philosophy of mind, people sometimes say things like the following: If functionalism is true about consciousness, then digital computers could be conscious; all it requires is that they instantiate the right programs. And yes, most functionalists about consciousness do think that. But the claim about digital...

Available here. Abstract: Future AI persons might both (1.) deserve moral consideration and rights fully equal with natural human persons, and (2.) have lifeways so radically different from ours as to break familiar patterns of moral thinking by violating our ordinary background assumptions. This article presents a...

Available here. Abstract: Future AI persons might both (1.) deserve moral consideration and rights fully equal with natural human persons, and (2.) have lifeways so radically different from ours as to break familiar patterns of moral thinking by violating our ordinary background assumptions. This article presents a...

Biological naturalists (e.g., Godfrey-Smith, Block, Searle, Seth) suggest that computers aren't made of the right kind of stuff to be conscious. Consciousness, they suggest, requires a biological substrate that computers lack. It's not always clear, however, exactly what property animal biologies have that computers...