Mind Matters Natural and Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis

TagAda Lovelace

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Teal Paint Swirl

An Excerpt from Chapter Two of Non-Computable You

What You Do That Artificial Intelligence Never Will by Mind Matters podcast host Robert J. Marks is now available in audiobook form. Listen now to an excerpt from the second chapter as read by Larry Nobles. Will machines someday replace attorneys, physicians, computer programmers, and world leaders? What about composers, painters, and novelists? Will tomorrow’s supercomputers duplicate and exceed humans? Read More ›

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BIG letters inside a London store

Does Creativity Just Mean Bigger Data? Or Something Else?

Michael Egnor and Robert J. Marks look at claims that artificial intelligence can somehow be taught to be creative

In Define information before you talk about it, neurosurgeon Michael Egnor interviewed engineering prof Robert J. Marks on the way information, not matter, shapes our world (October 28, 2021). In the first portion, Egnor and Marks discussed questions like: Why do two identical snowflakes seem more meaningful than one snowflake? Now they turn to the relationship between information and creativity. Is creativity a function of more information? Or is there more to it? This portion begins at 10:46 min. A partial transcript and notes, Show Notes, and Additional Resources follow. Michael Egnor: How does biological information differ from information in nonliving things? Robert J. Marks: I don’t know if it does… I do believe after recent study that the mind Read More ›

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The robot writes with a pen and looks at the computer monitor. Artificial Intelligence

Bingecast: Selmer Bringsjord on the Lovelace Test

The Turing test, developed by Alan Turing in 1950, is a test of a machine’s ability to exhibit intelligent behaviour indistinguishable from a human. Many think that Turing’s proposal for intelligence, especially creativity, has been proven inadequate. Is the Lovelace test a better alternative? What are the capabilities and limitations of AI? Robert J. Marks and Dr. Selmer Bringsjord discuss Read More ›

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Close-up view of the Difference Engine

Lovelace: The Programmer Who Spooked Alan Turing

Ada Lovelace understood her mentor Charles Babbage’s plans for his new Analytical Engine and was better than he at explaining what it could do

Turing thought that computers could be got to think. Thus he had to address Lovelace’s objection from a century earlier, that they could not be creative.

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The poetry of Love

Thinking Machines? The Lovelace Test Raises the Stakes

The Turing test has had a free ride in science media for far too long, says an AI expert

In the view of Rensselaer philosopher and computer scientist Selmer Bringsjord, the iconic Turing test for human-like intelligence in computers is inadequate and easily gamed. Merely sounding enough like a human to fool people does not establish human-like intelligence. He proposes the much more challenging Lovelace test, based on an observation from computer pioneer Ada Lovelace (1815–1852) that true creativity is what distinguishes humans from machines.

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The Turing Test is Dead. Long Live The Lovelace Test

The Turing test, developed by Alan Turing in 1950, is a test of a machine’s ability to exhibit intelligent behaviour indistinguishable from a human. Many think that Turing’s proposal for intelligence, especially creativity, has been proven inadequate. Is the Lovelace test a better alternative? Robert J. Marks and Dr. Selmer Bringsjord discuss the Turing test, the Lovelace test, and machine Read More ›

Young businesswoman thinking while using a laptop at work

Jeffrey Shallit, a computer scientist, doesn’t know how computers work

Patterns in computers only have meaning when they are caused by humans programming and using them.

Materialism is a kind of intellectual disability that afflicts even the well-educated. To put it simply, machines don’t and can’t think. Dr. Shallit’s wristwatch doesn’t know what time it is. Dr. Shallit’s iPod doesn’t enjoy the music it plays or listen to his phone calls. His television doesn’t like or dislike movies. And his computer doesn’t, and can’t, think.

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