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A recurring topic in interstellar exploration and the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) is the role of artificial intelligence. More precisely, these are programs or devices that are capable of performing cognitive tasks that…
In physics, there is the prevailing intuition that we are part of a unique external world, and that the goal of physics is to understand and describe this world. This assumption of the fundamentality of objective reality is often seen as a…
This paper outlines the implications of neural-level accounts of insight, and models of the conceptual interactions that underlie creativity, for a theory of cultural evolution. Since elements of human culture exhibit cumulative, adaptive,…
Using the example of the film 2001: A Space Odyssey, this chapter illustrates the challenges posed by an AI capable of making decisions that go against human interests. But are human decisions always rational and ethical? In reality, the…
Anthropic reasoning is a critical tool to understand probabilities, especially in a large universe or multiverse. According to anthropic reasoning, we should consider ourselves typical among members of a reference class that must include…
The human brain is the substrate for human intelligence. By simulating the human brain, artificial intelligence builds computational models that have learning capabilities and perform intelligent tasks approaching the human level. Deep…
The anthropocentric cultural idea that humans are active agents exerting control over their environments has been largely normalized and inscribed in practices, policies, and products of contemporary industrialized societies. This view…
Earth is the only known inhabited planet in the universe to date. However, advancements in the fields of astrobiology and observational astronomy, and the discovery of large varieties of extremophiles with extraordinary capablities to…
As the complexity of AI systems and their interactions with the world increases, generating explanations for their behaviour is important for safely deploying AI. For agents, the most natural abstractions for predicting behaviour attribute…
The feasibility of autonomous artificial thinking systems needs to compare the way the human beings acquire their information and develops the thought with the current capacities of the autonomous information systems. Our model uses four…
A system with artificial intelligence usually relies on symbol manipulation, at least partly and implicitly. However, the interpretation of the symbols - what they represent and what they are about - is ultimately left to humans, as…
The goal of this study was to investigate the translate-ability of creative works into other domains. We tested whether people were able to recognize which works of art were inspired by which pieces of music. Three expert painters created…
Interactions with large language models have led to the suggestion that these models may soon be conscious. From the perspective of neuroscience, this position is difficult to defend. For one, the inputs to large language models lack the…
Contemporary conversational AI systems based on large language models (LLMs) can engage users on a wide variety of topics, including philosophy, spirituality, and religion. Suitably prompted, LLMs can be coaxed into discussing such…
For the most of my life, I have earned my living as a computer vision professional busy with image processing tasks and problems. In the computer vision community there is a widespread belief that artificial vision systems faithfully…
We approach the question "What is Consciousness?" in a new way, not as Descartes' "systematic doubt", but as how organisms find their way in their world. Finding one's way involves finding possible uses of features of the world that might…
This article questions the widespread assumption that there are brain representations that will always remain unconscious in the sense of being inaccessible to individual awareness under any circumstances. This implies that some part of the…
I intend to make a scientific contribution of my subjective experience as a single unit of self-described ``artist'' leveraging artificial intelligence as an assistive visual creation tool, in the hopes that it may provide some inspiration…
It is asserted that consciousness functionally is a vision. Biologically it is a sensation of work of a brain that converts external and internal signals into visual output. However, as we well know, human consciousness includes meaning…
The search for an inhabited planet, other than our own, is a driver of planetary exploration in our solar system and beyond. Using information from our own planet to inform search strategies allows for a targeted search. It is, however,…