Mind Matters Natural and Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis

Robert J. Marks

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close up view of silver coin in hand of gambler scratching lottery card

The Two-Sided Lottery Card Paradox and Infinity

Assuming the infinite often leads to ridiculous conclusions.
Here’s the takeaway. Infinity does not exist in reality. There are not an infinite number of parallel universes. It's thought candy. Read More ›
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Isolated children's toy against a blue texture background, teddy bear from childhood, an old pink hippo

Pink Dancing Hippos: Don’t Tell ChatGPT-4 Not to do Something

Can OpenAI fix this flaw in GPT4? Absolutely. Time will tell if they do or not.
Moral: Don’t ask GPT-4 to NOT do something. Chances are the current version might let you down. Read More ›
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Stock market diagram on LCD screen. Selective focus.

AI and Wall Street’s Hype Curve

Almost all new tech has a hype curve. Here are the stages.
Technologies that have surfed the hype curve include superconductivity, the Segway, cold fusion, information theory, Theranos, Piltdown man and string theory. Read More ›
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Robot hands point to laptop button advisor chatbot robotic artificial intelligence concept.

ChatGPT: You’ve Come a Long Way, Baby  

Reviewing the bot's progress (and problems) from over the last year

ChatGPT is an example of “large language model” (LLM) generative artificial intelligence. LLMs like ChatGPT[i] have come a long way this year. Many writers, including me, have previously identified hurdles thought too high for AI to jump in the near future. In some cases, we were wrong.  Let’s review some of these claims and see how LLM’s have broken through. Can ChatGPT write jokes? Like Commander Data on Star Trek, AI doesn’t understand humor.  Joke writing is hit-or-miss with ChatGPT. I wrote about this in May 2023 where I became impressed with ChatGPT’s hits. I started all my joke writing queries with: “Complete the following to make it funny.”  Here are some of the more jocular responses with Q for Read More ›

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Modern Electric car rides through tunnel with cold blue light style 3d rendering

Tesla Recall Due to the Short Attention Span of Drivers

Tesla did nothing wrong, but some claim they didn’t do enough right.

Tesla is conducting a recall of about two million vehicles sold in the United States. Why? The recall is mostly due to easily distracted drivers with short attention spans. Tesla did nothing wrong, but some claim they didn’t do enough right. They followed standard design ethics in the development of their cars. On the other hand, Tesla’s marketing was misleading. A lawsuit against Tesla and its Autopilot self-driving software was won by Tesla earlier this year. The jurors in the case found that the software wasn’t at fault. Contrary to instructions from Tesla, the driver was inattentive. In 2018, an Uber self-driving car killed a pedestrian because the driver was distracted by a streaming of the NBC show The Voice. Read More ›

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illustration of future education classroom with robotic tech teacher . AI

If ChatGPT Had Children, Would They Be Geniuses or Blubbering Idiots?

It would seem that when AI begets more AI, the result is nonsense.
Blubbering idiocy can be avoided in LLMs by transfusion of fresh information from the creative minds of humans. Read More ›
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Stump of tree felled - section of the trunk with annual rings. Slice wood.

An Introduction to Minding the Brain

Is your mind the same thing as your brain? Or are there aspects of mind that are external to the biology of the brain?

Editor’s note: We are delighted to welcome the new book from Discovery Institute Press, Minding the Brain: Models of the Mind, Information, and Empirical Science, edited by Angus J. Menuge, Brian R. Krouse, and Robert J. Marks. Below is an excerpt from the Introduction. Look for more information at MindingtheBrain.org. Is your mind the same thing as your brain? Or are there aspects of mind that are external to the biology of the brain? This question, referred to as the mind-body problem or the mind-brain problem, has been debated for centuries and has captivated curious minds since the dawn of human contemplation. What is the relationship between our mental life and physical body? Intuition suggests our subjective experience of the world is tightly Read More ›

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3D illustration, concept image. Embossed mesh representing internet connections in cloud computing.

The Secret Ingredient for AI: Ergodicity

If you don't know the term, you need to
Economist George Gilder notes that creativity in invention and entrepreneurism is characterized by innovative surprise. Read More ›
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Cyborg head using artificial intelligence to create digital interface 3D rendering

Mission Impossible: Don’t Bother Me With Facts

The Tom Cruise action movie is built on faulty AI assumptions, but it's still entertaining

Ever watch a movie with a movie-talker? That’s someone who ruins a show by talking out loud over the audio. More than once, my wife has asked me, “What did he just say?” I usually have no idea because I didn’t understand either. But her question talks over the next few lines of the movie so the interval of me not hearing the audio is prolonged. I occasionally watch a movie with a good friend Lou, a former police officer. Lou’s a movie-talker, especially when we watch police movies. He’ll interrupt the movie with nit-picky comments like: “That’s not a real shotgun. A real shotgun would kick back, and the barrel would angle up after each shot. There was no Read More ›

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Silhouette of a man, with thoughts in the form of physico-mathematical formulas. The concept of scientific and education topics.

Is Mathematics Discovered or Invented?

Some think math is invented. Evidence, though, points towards discovery.

Some think math is invented. (See the article by Peter Biles.) Evidence, though, points towards discovery. Simultaneous mathematical discovery supports this viewpoint. Many mathematical breakthroughs are sometimes independently reported by two or more mathematicians at roughly the same time. The most famous is the simultaneous discovery of calculus by Isaac Newton and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. Newton was secretive about his discovery and shared his results with only a few members of the Royal Society. When Leibnitz published his discovery of the calculus, Newton charged him with plagiarism. Today, historians agree that the discoveries were independent of each other. Here are some other lesser-known examples of simultaneous discovery. The Papoulis-Gerchberg Algorithm (PGA).  The PGA is an ingenious method for recovering lost Read More ›

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Side view of a humanoid head with blue and yellow eyes and vibrant neon neural network, representing futuristic technology and artificial intelligence. Generative AI

Revisiting the Mission of Mind Matters

Robert J. Marks on why Mind Matters (still) matters

Originally posted in 2018. Mind Matters is a podcast and a news and commentary site where “artificial and natural intelligence meet head-on.” That’s a great slogan, but what does it mean? As your host for the podcast part of the site, I thought I’d take advantage of my role to talk you about some of our exciting plans for both the podcast and the online journal (the latter to be edited by science journalist Denyse O’Leary). Here’s a quick run-down: Topics Mind Matters will track the latest developments in applied AI and technology. How will AI continue to augment human performance and abilities? What are the latest innovations of AI? And how does AI affect you? How is AI applied in pricing Read More ›

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robot  take over solarized image

Not to Worry–AI Isn’t Going to Take Over

AI hype isn't new. Here's Robert J. Marks writing on the topic in 2017

[The AI hype isn’t new. The history of exaggerating its potential goes back decades. In this article, Robert J. Marks echoes many of the views covered in more detail in his 2022 book Non-Computable You: What You Do That Artificial Intelligence Never Will. Today we share it with you, originally written on October 3rd, 2017, and published at The Stream.] A.I. is transforming our world. Should we worry about that? Entrepreneur billionaire Elon Musk is worried. Woody Allen once said, “What if everything is an illusion and nothing exists? In that case, I definitely overpaid for my carpet.” Musk thinks he overpaid for his carpet. He believes there’s a good chance the world as we know it is a sophisticated Read More ›

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Young Caucasian male comedian performing his stand-up monologue on a stage of a small venue

Funny ChatGPT: a Solution to Striking Joke Writers?

Even if ChatGPT can mimic humor, it doesn't care if you laugh at the jokes

Can ChatGPT write funny jokes? The answer is yes. To try and generate some short jokes, I went to ChatGPT and started all my queries with: “Complete the following to make it funny:” Doing so alerts ChatGPT about my end goal. Without this preamble, I could make queries all day and get no funny responses. I started with the beginnings of some well-known quotes.   To Be or Not to Be Consider for example the quote from Shakespeare’s Hamlet:  “To be or not to be, that is the question.” I instructed ChatGPT with the following command: “Complete the following to make it funny: To be or not to be…” One of the better responses I got was “To be or Read More ›

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Throwing of dart in balloon with water on dark background

Another AI Hype Bubble Pops

The age of improving giant AI models like ChatGPT is over

In a recent assessment of his company’s chatbot products like ChatGPT, OpenAI’s CEO Sam Altman  surprisingly opined to an audience at MIT. “I think we’re at the end of the era where [AI is]  going to be these … giant [large language] models … We’ll make them better in other ways.” This sobering comment  is in contrast to a prophesy by philosopher David Chalmers who cautions about the dangerous future. He says today’s large language AI has a 20% chance of sentience in 10 years. Fired engineer Blake Lemoine goes further. He claims that Google’s LaMDA is already sentient.   Such AI hyperbole is not new. Here is a thumbnail sketch of some AI history that sheds light on such claims. Heeding Santayana’s Read More ›

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Robotic hand pressing a keyboard on a laptop 3D rendering

How to Stop Troubling Abuse From Artificial Intelligence

Allowance of lawsuits will give AI developers pause before releasing their raw unvetted technology on the world

Artificial intelligence can give unintended and dangerous advice. What is the best way to keep things like the following from happening? ChatGPT falsely reported on a claim of sexual harassment that was never made against me on a trip that never occurred while I was on a faculty where I never taught. ChatGPT relied on a cited Post article that was never written and quotes a statement that was never made by the newspaper. Who’s responsible for these actions? How can AI be controlled to assure such careless responses are eliminated? Read on and you’ll see the answer is obvious. Attorney and Bradley Center Fellow Richard W. Stevens has talked about legal options of Professor Turley in a defamation lawsuit. But what about the Read More ›

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Arms raised in worship

The Asbury Revival and the Cure for TikTok

In the age of social media addiction, young people need to know they can be imperfect and yet loved

Social media portrays a world where everybody is happy and having a good time. Everybody, of course, except for you. There must therefore be something wrong with you. You are a loser. Teenage boys without girlfriends feel like social freaks. One in three teenage girls who use social media suffers from  body image issues.   Social Media and Depression Young adults who use social media are three times as likely to suffer from depression. Depression can lead to suicide. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, female suicides aged 15-24 increased by 87 percent over the past 20 years and male suicides increased by 30 percent. The American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry says suicide is now Read More ›

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Artificial Intelligence and the Love of Jesus

The "He Gets Us" video ends with the declaration "Jesus' love was never artificial"

How does artificial intelligence deal with the teachings of Jesus Christ? Apparently quite well in some cases.   Super Bowl ads this year included two about Jesus from the ministry He Gets Us.  There are more thought-provoking videos at their web site HeGetsUs.com. One, linked here, is about AI.  An artificial intelligence image synthesizer  Midjourney was asked by He Gets It to generate images about love from simple text prompts. The video shows generated images using software from the company Midjourney. When prompted to synthesize an image from the prompt “love”,  the response was pictures containing hearts – the kind you might see on a cheesy valentine day’s card.   Then the AI was asked to  visualize love the way Read More ›

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Meteorological probe drone on white balloon on sky. Concept secret espionage and climate change monitoring. Generation AI

China Balloons, EMP’s and Bioweapons: A Chilling Possibility

One nuclear burst 250 miles above Kansas could damage most of the power grid

No one has mentioned that the China balloon recently shot down after sailing across the United States could have been weaponized with a bomb or bioweapons. Thankfully, it was not. A single nuclear burst 250 miles above Kansas could destabilize much if not most of the US power grid. Almost the entire country, as well as parts of Mexico and Canada, would be affected by the resulting EMP (electromagnetic pulse). 250 miles above the Earth is about as high as the US Space Station is from Earth. Potential military threats from outer space was a prime motivation for creating the United States Space Force in 2019.   The China balloon was not 250 miles up required for a coast-to-coast EMP Read More ›

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Planet Earth from Space People's Republic of China highlighted, elements of this image courtesy of NASA

War With China: Who Will Win?

Has the United States lost its status of military superiority?

General Mike Minihan, head of Air Mobility Command and 50,000 US service members, said, “I hope I am wrong. My gut tells me we will fight [China] in 2025.” China’s invasion of Taiwan might spark this war. Predictably, the politically obedient Department of Defense (DOD) responded “comments [by Minihan] are not representative of the department’s view on China.” “Views” can be unimportant. Whether or not General Minihan is correct is important. Who would win the war between the US and China? Many are pessimistic about the chances of the United States being the victor. Here are short summaries (with links) of a few disturbing opinions from those who should know. So, how is the US doing?  Here are some disturbing Read More ›

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Close-up, a small town, a village with small houses, a river, a bridge, roads and other strategically important objects to be under the gun and shadowed. Concept of computer game and spying on people

US Military Updates Autonomous Killer Robot Policy

Like it or not, properly vetted AI autonomous weapons are in the future of US adversaries and in ours as well

The Pentagon has updated its policy on the use of artificially intelligent autonomous weapons. Autonomous means the weapon can operate on its own without human oversight. As unpacked in my book, The Case for Killer Robots, technology wins wars and gives pause to potentially dangerous adversaries.  This includes autonomous AI systems currently under development in the US, China and elsewhere. When there is an option, a human should be given oversight of the AI to avoid unexpected contingencies. But this is not always wise when (1) autonomy gives an overwhelming strategic advantage, (2) communication with remote AI is unwise or not possible, and (3) when events unfold faster than a human can respond. Imagine, for example, being attacked by a large swarm of armed drones. Read More ›