Artificial Intelligence and the Soul | Anselm Ramelow
The Thomistic Institute
The Thomistic Institute
4.8 • 873 Ratings
🗓️ 28 December 2018
⏱️ 81 minutes
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Summary
This lecture was offered at Stanford on October 16th, 2018. For more information about upcoming TI events, visit: thomisticinstitute.org/events-1/
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | So this is where it all happens, right? |
| 0:02.0 | The artificial intelligence in Silicon Valley, and some of you probably are working at that |
| 0:07.0 | and looking at the work of your hands and wondering what have I just made, you know, |
| 0:12.0 | and can it become self-conscious? Can it talk back at me perhaps? |
| 0:17.0 | You know, and those questions as contemporary as they might seem are not completely new. |
| 0:23.6 | I mean, just think of Frankenstein's monster, right? |
| 0:25.6 | I mean, there's also an artificial making of material things, and in this case, the assumption was it does come to a kind of a self-consciousness. |
| 0:35.6 | The even older stories like the old Gollum story of the Jewish tradition, |
| 0:39.3 | so not Gollum from Lord of the Rings, but from the Jewish tradition |
| 0:43.3 | where they make this huge man out of clay and they put the word of God in his mouth and it comes alive. |
| 0:50.3 | And they even argue things we argue now about whether they should give them legal rights or legal standing or moral standing. |
| 0:58.0 | So these questions are not completely new. |
| 1:01.0 | They have been around before. |
| 1:03.0 | But of course we do that now in a much more systematic and almost industrial level kind of fashion. |
| 1:10.0 | So are then, is there a possibility that computers could be persons, |
| 1:15.6 | that they could have a soul, that they are conscious? |
| 1:19.6 | And how would we even go about answering such a question? |
| 1:23.6 | One first approach might be just with our normal intuitions. |
| 1:28.3 | And I found a little formulation by Alan Turing in his famous article that gives a whole list of these. |
| 1:35.3 | Some are more plausible than others perhaps. Here is it. |
| 1:38.3 | So this is what they cannot do. That be kind, resourceful, beautiful, friendly, have initiative, have a sense of humor, |
| 1:48.0 | tell right from wrong, make mistakes, fall in love, enjoy strawberries and cream, make someone |
... |
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