Two Mandik videos on Searle and artificial intelligence

From Pete Mandik's Brain Hammer blog:


http://petemandik.blogspot.com/2014/10/two-new-mandik-videos-on-intentionality.html

Turing Test for Artificial Dogs

From Existential Comics http://existentialcomics.com/comic/15

Philosophy of Mind Video Playlists

I have compiled the following YouTube playlists on philosophy of mind topics:

Mind-Body Problem
Alien Minds
Personal Identity
Robots, AI, and Artificial Life
Illusions
Posthumanity
Singularity
Plato's Cave and the Simulation Hypothesis

robots in love

On-line Turing Machine simulators.

On-line Turing Machine simulators.

http://ironphoenix.org/tril/tm/ 

http://morphett.info/turing/turing.html

Spaun brain activity and decoding for sample tasks - YouTube

Spaun brain activity and decoding for sample tasks - YouTube

From Science (http://www.sciencemag.org/content/338/6111/1202):

A Large-Scale Model of the Functioning Brain

Eliasmith et al

Abstract:

A central challenge for cognitive and systems neuroscience is to relate the incredibly complex behavior of animals to the equally complex activity of their brains. Recently described, large-scale neural models have not bridged this gap between neural activity and biological function. In this work, we present a 2.5-million-neuron model of the brain (called “Spaun”) that bridges this gap by exhibiting many different behaviors. The model is presented only with visual image sequences, and it draws all of its responses with a physically modeled arm. Although simplified, the model captures many aspects of neuroanatomy, neurophysiology, and psychological behavior, which we demonstrate via eight diverse tasks.

Noam Chomsky on Where Artificial Intelligence Went Wrong

Noam Chomsky on Where Artificial Intelligence Went Wrong - The Atlantic

In May of last year, during the 150th anniversary of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a symposium on "Brains, Minds and Machines" took place, where leading computer scientists, psychologists and neuroscientists gathered to discuss the past and future of artificial intelligence and its connection to the neurosciences.
The gathering was meant to inspire multidisciplinary enthusiasm for the revival of the scientific question from which the field of artificial intelligence originated: how does intelligence work? How does our brain give rise to our cognitive abilities, and could this ever be implemented in a machine? 

Noam Chomsky, speaking in the symposium, wasn't so enthused. Chomsky critiqued the field of AI for adopting an approach reminiscent of behaviorism, except in more modern, computationally sophisticated form. Chomsky argued that the field's heavy use of statistical techniques to pick regularities in masses of data is unlikely to yield the explanatory insight that science ought to offer. For Chomsky, the "new AI" -- focused on using statistical learning techniques to better mine and predict data -- is unlikely to yield general principles about the nature of intelligent beings or about cognition. 

This critique sparked an elaborate reply to Chomsky from Google's director of research and noted AI researcher, Peter Norvig, who defended the use of statistical models and argued that AI's new methods and definition of progress is not far off from what happens in the other sciences.

Blog chronicle of open-source robot

Blog chronicle of open-source robot, Salvius: http://salviusrobot.blogspot.com

Introducing the David 8 - The Next Generation Weyland Robot

Retro Thing: The Tinkertoy Computer

Retro Thing: The Tinkertoy Computer:

This brilliant Tinkertoy digital computer was built by a team of students at MIT in the 1980s. It's a marvel of mechanical design that apparently plays a "mean game of tic-tac-toe." The idea was born in 1975, when two Sophomores worked on a class project to build something digital from Tinkertoys. It took another few years before they collaborated over the phone to design a working machine for the Mid-America Science Museum:
"A Tinkertoy framework called the read head clicks and clacks its way down the front of the monolith At some point the clicking mysteriously stops; a "core piece" within the framework spins and then with a satisfying "'kathunk' indirectly kicks an 'output duck,' a bird-shaped construction. The output duck swings down from its perch so that its beak points at a number- which identifies the computer's next move in a game of tic-tac-toe."

Mimicking the brain, in silicon - MIT News Office

Mimicking the brain, in silicon - MIT News Office

For decades, scientists have dreamed of building computer systems that could replicate the human brain’s talent for learning new tasks.
MIT researchers have now taken a major step toward that goal by designing a computer chip that mimics how the brain’s neurons adapt in response to new information. This phenomenon, known as plasticity, is believed to underlie many brain functions, including learning and memory.

Searle's Chinese Room in 60 seconds

Hierarchy of Robot Needs

Hierarchy of Robot Needs, a photo by lunchbreath on Flickr.

The LEGO Turing Machine - YouTube

The LEGO Turing Machine - YouTube
"A TV Shop themed demonstration of a Turing Machine made in LEGO Mindstorms. It was made as part of a project at computer science at Aarhus University. A blog about the project is available at http://legoofdoom.blogspot.com"

Philosophy Bro on the Chinese Room

Philosophy Bro: Mailbag Monday: The Chinese Room
Excerpt:

Before I get into the experiment itself, here's the problem Searle is addressing - what does it mean for a machine to understand something? Is it possible we will ever produce a machine that can think on its own, that can learn and truly understand English? Offhand, it seems possible; after all, if we build a robot that speaks English as well as we do, who understands the nuances of language, who we just can't tell is a robot, then what exactly is the difference between his claim to know English and your best friend's claim to know English? This is the basis of the famous 'Turing Test' for AI - when we reach the point where we can no longer distinguish between a human and a computer when speaking to them, then we have truly achieved Artificial Intelligence.

Chinese room from the Philosophy of Mind MetaResource

The Philosophy of Mind MetaResource contains links to definitions and discussions of key terms in the philosophy of mind culled by Pete Mandik from the following sources:
- Eliasmith's Dictionary of Philosophy of Mind (DPM)
- The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (SEP)
- A Field Guide to the Philosophy of Mind (FG)
- The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy (IEP)
- Brain Hammer (BH)

Here's a sample entry:

Chinese room
[DPM] [SEP] [FG] [IEP] [BH]