Michael J. Behe's Blog, page 546

Logic and First Principles, 6: Reason/Rationality and Responsibility (i.e. moral government) are inextricably entangled

One of the common presumptions of our day is that facts and values are utterly, irreconcilably distinct. That is, that IS and OUGHT are irreconcilably separated by an ugly gulch that cannot be bridged. But, this is again one of those little errors in the beginning that have ruinous consequences as they spread out into our thinking and living in community.

Let’s start with Hume’s Guillotine argument from his A Treatise of Human Nature:

“In every system of morality, which I have hitherto met with, I have always remarked, that the author proceeds for some time in the ordinary way of reasoning, and establishes the being of a God, or makes observations concerning human affairs; when of a sudden I am surprised to find, that instead of the usual copulations of propositions, is, and is not, I meet with no proposition that is not connected with an ought, or an ought not. This change is imperceptible; but is, however, of the last consequence. For as this ought, or ought not, expresses some new relation or affirmation, ’tis necessary that it should be observed and explained; and at the same time that a reason should be given, for what seems altogether inconceivable, how this new relation can be a deduction from others, which are entirely different from it. But as authors do not commonly use this precaution, I shall presume to recommend it to the readers; and am persuaded, that this small attention would subvert all the vulgar systems of morality, and let us see, that the distinction of vice and virtue is not founded merely on the relations of objects, nor is perceived by reason. ”

This is a crucial error, one that commonly appears in our thinking.

(Notice, how, all along, there is an implicit assumption that the reader acknowledges a known duty to truth, right reason, fairness etc. That’s a big clue that we simply cannot sever IS and OUGHT, and that the only viable project is to discover how they are fused; also recognising that this must be in the world-root. As, only there can there be an undeniable bridging and fusion that allows us to freely and confidently bring both to bear in our cognitive endeavours. And, notice: this is NOT a proof, we are forced already to implicitly use that entanglement of IS and OUGHT at each and every step along the way. We cannot stand outside the circle, we cannot escape the entanglement. We are facing self-evidence and world-root level first principles here. Fully parallel to how we cannot but use distinct identity in thought and life, bringing with it LOI, LNC, LEM and the natural counting numbers etc.)

A good point to proceed from is an exchange that developed in the Getting at Truth thread, between Sev and myself:

SEV (with comments), 44: >>We’ve been over this ground before [–> Yes, we are currently doing a review of first principles because our civilisation has gone ruinously wrong at root level] but “Once more unto the breach…”

1] The first self evident moral truth is that we are inescapably under the government of ought.

I think the concept of self-evident truths outside formal systems like mathematics or logic is problematical but, regardless, since my view is that moral claims can be neither true nor false there can be no self-evident moral truths. [–> notice the worldview framing]

This does not preclude the possibility that there are acts, such as the rape and murder of a child, which almost everyone can agree is most egregiously immoral. [–> notice, community consensus (and so the edict of the power-brokers) as yardstick] You can say it is self-evidently immoral to us but is it self-evident in any universal sense? [–> it is always possible to cling to absurdity (think, Nazism/fascism and the as yet unfinished history of Communism), and there are those who are defective in thought, hence the pons asinorum principle in Geometry and elsewhere]

2] Second self evident truth, we discern that some things
are right and others are wrong by a compass-sense we term conscience
which guides our thought. (Again, objectors depend on a sense of guilt/
urgency to be right not wrong on our part to give their points
persuasive force.

We certainly observe that in most if not all human societies codes of what is acceptable behavior emerge which people feel compelled to live by and which they feel bad about when they don’t observe. [–> conscience acknowledged but reframed in terms of cultural particularity]

3] Third, were this sense of conscience and linked sense
that we can make responsibly free, rational decisions to be a delusion,
we would at once descend into a status of grand delusion in which there
is no good ground for confidence in our self-understanding.

It would only be delusional if there were an insistence that the sense of conscience were a manifestation of some natural moral law for which we could find no objective evidence [–> and, good sir, why is “objective evidence” of any significance, apart from duties to truth, right reason, fairness, etc? Also, if we have an illusory voice within that is ungrounded in reality but shapes our reasoning and arguing, that would perforce be evidence of grand, essentially universal delusion] . . . >>

KF, 47: >>Notice, how you [Sev] inadvertently inserted a presumption that shifted the goal-posts? That’s a signature of a worldview driving conclusions.

So, back to first principles: self-evidence is about start-points for
warrant, in effect asking where is it that we are forced to accept
premises antecedent to onward warrant, on which warrant builds. Thus,
the concept that we come to the question with world-experiences and as
going concern thinkers. Warrant cannot be chained forever or go in
futile circles, so are there yardsticks that are naturally present? Yes,
there are things which (once we understand) we see are so, are
necessarily so and are necessarily so on pain pf patent, immediate
absurdity on the attempted denial. That is, some sort of self-defeating
explosion happens if we try to deny them.

Notice, that is broader than self-referential incoherence, precisely
because we need something broader than that case, to operate in the
world as responsible, rational thinkers.

For example, the project of responsible persuasive argument presumes
known duty to truth, right reason, fairness etc. Try the denial of such
duties and you reduce reasoned discussion to nihilistic, cynical
manipulation by the more clever and ruthless, utterly corroding the
fabric of society and undermining human thriving. Explosion. In a world
of message dominance by irresponsible manipulation, there is no basis
for reasonable discussion, only for suspicion and polarisation.
(Resemblance to current political discourse and the media across our
civilisation is NOT coincidental.)

This immediately means that rational life is inextricably entangled
with moral duties, the responsibility that we have mentioned.

Now, that is not a proof, but it is a test of insight and good sense, AKA wisdom.

Let us come back to moral SET 1 (and 2): moral government attested to by the inner witness of conscience.

The testimony of conscience to duties violated or sometimes to duties
fulfilled even at terrible cost, is an integral aspect of our conscious
self-awareness. We cannot effectively deny its presence or influence in
general, and for cause regard those with deadened or defective
consciences as monstrous or at least severely damaged.

It cannot be denied, it is a commonplace of our common experience of
the world. And, it is inextricably entangled with our rational
enterprises as they pivot on known, acknowledged, expected conscious
(and sub conscious) awareness of duties to truth and right reason,
fairness etc.

Acknowledging this is a necessary start point for not only reasoning on moral subjects but on general topics.

Where, of course, conscience is a testimony not a legislator. We also
know that it can be dulled or deadened, or even overly sensitive. The
roots of duty lie elsewhere.

And post-Hume we know that elsewhere must only lie at the world-root
or else we face fatal groundlessness, including for our project of
collective reasoning and knowledge-building through adequate warrant.

Conscience is indeed a first and self-evident moral truth.>>

That is how much is at stake. END

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Can cities serve as cauldrons of evolution (speciation)?

For spiders, raccoons, and such? Big, high-tech cities are new and different. But you don’t get remarkable results from these independent theatres of evolution. That’s clear from a recent long article, well worth reading, mostly for the fascinating information but also for the need, so common these days, to assert that something is happening which obviously isn’t:

Whatever the dynamics of the effect, these results are helping to confirm that the structure of city environments has profound evolutionary implications for its inhabitants. “The specifics will vary from species to species,” says Luc De Meester, an evolutionary ecologist at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven in Belgium. “But there are generalities.” While most research has focused on species of conservation concern, “even species that tend to be abundant . . . are very strongly impacted by city life,” he adds. Given this potential for urbanization to influence the genetic structure of populations, some researchers have posited that cities could act as hotspots for the evolution of new species. Especially in small or fragmented populations, the breakdown of gene flow can help promote speciation. “It’s a tantalizing idea,” says Munshi-South. But there’s a long way to go before scientists can point to a specific case with certainty, he says. “Even in the few cases that have been talked about as potential examples of urban speciation, there are a lot of unresolved questions.” CATHERINE OFFORD, “Cities can serve as cauldrons of evolution” at The Scientist

Sums it up: “there’s a long way to go before scientists can point to a specific case with certainty” Of course, one factor is surely that the species that get involve with cities are highly adaptable to begin with and are likely to merely specialize rather than “evolve.”

Here’s an example from the article:

Compared to raccoons (Procyon lotor) in rural areas or in the city zoo, Toronto’s street raccoons are bulkier—some being almost a meter long and weighing up to 15 kilograms (33 pounds). Last summer, researchers documented signs of hyperglycemia in city populations of the nocturnal animals, a condition not observed in rural raccoons (Conserv Physiol, 6:coy026, 2018). The likely cause: a diet of high-fat, sugary food from the city’s garbage cans. Researchers have also reported diet changes in other urban mammals, birds, and even some invertebrates. A 2015 study found that Manhattan’s pavement ants (Tetramorium sp.) showed isotope signatures in their tissues consistent with increasing consumption of human fast foods (Proc R Soc B, 282:20142608). CATHERINE OFFORD, “Cities can serve as cauldrons of evolution” at The Scientist

I (O’Leary for News) remember those bruiser Toronto raccoons well. They are “evolving” — into urban raccoons. Come back a century from now and they will be plodding around at twilight, fatter than ever.

See also:

(Note: The racoons are not “becoming smarter,” such that that they can now manipulate latches where they couldn’t before. They were always able to use their hand-like front paws like that but the Toronto garbage bins did not used to have that kind of handle. In the past, raccoons have needed their kind of dexterity to pry off roof tiles, etc., so as to spend the winter in the attic insulation between food waste garbage days.

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In a world of supposedly random life, even muscles have their own clocks

passage of time, imaged/S. Sepp

Twenty years ago, we didn’t know that muscles had their own circadian clocks. They turn out to be important to health.

“Clock systems are a sort of core, primordial part of our genome that instruct and prepare cells for the work of using nutrients, moving around, breathing, and [other] fundamental processes,” says Joseph Bass, a clinical endocrinologist at Northwestern University. “This is a story that’s evolving across a lot of different experimental systems—and muscle is now a new experimental system on the block.” The study of circadian rhythms, the daily cycles that regulate tissue and cell function, was once focused primarily on the suprachiasmatic nucleus, the “master clock” in the brain. Beginning in the late 1990s, scientists began uncovering peripheral clocks—timekeepers located throughout the body—and in 2007, Esser, Takahashi, and their colleagues confirmed their presence in muscles… The muscle clock also appears to regulate the type of fuel that the cell burns. Although active tissues require more energy, cells still need some fuel during sleep, but rather than rely predominately on glucose, which powers contractile activity during waking hours, they burn lipids and amino acids while at rest. By examining mouse tissues at various time points, Schiaffino’s team observed that Bmal1 and its target gene, REV-ERBα, play a key role in this fuel selection process. “I think there has evolved a fairly clear picture that the clock is segregating . . . aspects of metabolism to fit with the rest and activity cycles of the day,” says Esser. DIANA KWON, “Muscle Clocks Play a Role in Regulating Metabolism” at The Scientist

Evolution, said to be entirely unintelligent, can even plan your day.

See also: Which 2018 news trends will affect ID?

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Experimental physicist: Particle theory is “in a crisis” and a bigger collider IS the answer!

Replacing the dipole magnet/CERN

Sabine Hossenfelder put the case against a new collider recently:

It is possible that in the data yet to come some new particle eventually shows up. But particle physicists are nervous. It’s not looking good – besides a few anomalies that are not statistically significant, there is no evidence for anything out of the normal. And if the LHC finds nothing new, there is no reason to think the next larger collider will. In which case, why build one? Sabine Hossenfelder, “How the LHC may spell the end of particle physics” at BackRe(Action)

Now here’s the case for it, addressing her concerns:

3) Particle theory is in a crisis. As my friend and colleague Gian Francesco Giudice likes to point out, crises are typically a productive moment. Since supersymmetry cannot be found by experiments, and the breathing space of its most natural instantiations is shrinking by the day, many theorists have turned to more complex ideas or to “effective theories” that describe new phenomena in a way that fits well with the measurements that experiments can produce. The point here is that at this juncture we cannot rely on theory to indicate the way. Should we then sit and wait for a new Weinberg to come along? It makes no sense. …

Concerning Sabine’s post

Sabine Hossenfelder, the star blogger and author of a bestselling book on the matter (“Lost in Math”, money very well spent if you ask me!), argues at her Backreaction site that the advocates of the FCC plan are overhyping the potential of their plan as well as the chances that it finds new physics. In a way, what she says is correct: the indicia that new physics be just around the corner are not strong at all…

Where I think Sabine is misguided (as has been pointed out by many commenters in her blog and in her Facebook thread) is, in my opinion too, that the absence of theoretical indications should never become a show-stopper to the investigation of Nature. To me, the fact that we can produce 40 TeV resonances if there exist any, is by itself a sufficient motivation to go out and try to do precisely that. Are there not enough anomalies in present-day data to indicate what we should look for in detail? Too bad, let us look for anything we can find, as Katie McAlpine explained well in her LHC rap. Tommaso Dorigo, “Why We Need A New Collider” at Science 2.0

So we should do it because we can, not because we really expect to learn very much? It may be that Dorigo is just not a good spokesperson for his position; he spends a good deal of time attacking Hossenfelder and her book.

Somehow, naturalism (nature is all there is) isn’t providing the hoped-for return on investments.

See also: Will the Large Hadron Collider doom particle physics? They’ll find the money to continue. Consider: The Standard Model begins with the hated Big Bang. Nothing that supports string theory, eternal cosmic inflation, or a multiverse has been found. Don’t many people just have to keep looking and keep quiet about what they find that wasn’t what they hoped for?

Sabine Hossenfelder: Particle Physics Now Belly Up. As It Happens, Her Book Is A Solid String Of 1’S At Amazon

and

Our universe understood at last: An expanding bubble in an extra dimension! The authors hope that their work will “pave the way for methods of testing string theory.” That could come in handy, you never know.

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Study: “Half-life” of scientists dramatically shorter over time

What’s hot? What’s not?/Niklas Bildhauer, Wikimedia

Scientists are becoming a temporary workforce (“permadocs”):

Following scientists in three fields, the paper’s authors found that it took about five years for a half of a science cohort to leave academic work in 2010 — compared to 35 years in the 1960s.

The researchers also found a “rapid rise” in scientists who spend their careers supporting others and never leading a paper of their own — from about 25 percent of scientists in the 1960s to 60 percent today.

…

A more advanced analysis suggests that for lead authors, number of publications has “consistently been a significant predictor of career longevity. We also see that citations reduced the hazard of exit in the early cohorts.” However, the paper says, more recently, the model is “dominated by publications, with citations having little independent effect.” And in contrast, for supporting authors, publications have “very weak effects until the most recent cohort.”Colleen Flaherty, “Rise of the Science Ph.D. Dropout” at Inside Higher Ed

The need to get a citation—any old how—may help account for peer review scandals and the need to treat fossil concepts like Darwinism as if they were still alive (why risk any kind of dissent when attrition is so high?).

See also: Kim Kardashian’s Paper One Of Top Ten Science Retractions Of 2018

and

Chinese Researchers Who Stray Could Face “Social Penalties”

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“But it can’t be design, M’sieur. Design is an illusion.”

What do readers’ think? Design or chance?/Fox News

Starting the first serious work day of the New Year off right: It seems that France’s Le Monde published a cover of the French President, Emmanuel Macron, that many think makes him look like Hitler.

The cover featured a black and white photograph of Macron, with an image of Yellow Vest protestors surging towards the Arc de Triomphe. There are bands of deep red behind Macron and the M is written in Gothic font. The headline reads: ‘From inauguration to Yellow Vests – The Champs-Élysées theatre of Macron’s power’.” “Le Monde creates controversy with ‘constructivist’ cover of Macron” at France 24

The trouble with that account is, cover artist Lincoln Agnew has done “Hitler” art before, for Harper’s Magazine (July 2017).

This francophone uproar has to do with the large, exurban protest group, the gilets jaunes (yellow vests), who find M. Macron a touch too “out of touch” and have taken to marching around, damaging monuments and such. Macron says they don’t represent French values.

Now, the interesting thing for our purposes is the inference to design as the best explanation:

In a tweet, the president of the National Assembly Richard Ferrand summed up the general sense of confusion over the intentions of the image:

“Looking forward to understanding what underlies the graphic and iconographic references of @lemonde_M If it cannot be a matter of chance, what is it then? In search of the lost meaning…” “Le Monde creates controversy with ‘constructivist’ cover of Macron” at France 24

Yes, lost meaning.

Mais non, say the mag’s editors. It’s just something the artist happened to pull out of “the graphics of Russian constructivism at the beginning of the 20th century, who used black and red. ”

It only looks like totalitarian art. Like all design, it is an illusion.

This is the coffee mug problem again: If consciousness is an illusion, Ferrand can’t attribute design.

A genuine totalitarian doesn’t bother with attributing design, or not seriously. He simply decides who stands in the way of power, intentionally or otherwise, and acts. Everything other than power (“who whom?”) is an illusion. There aren’t even explanations, only narratives.

If there is no design in nature, then it is an illusion and Macron will have to settle for minimizing the influence of the people he doesn’t like, without claiming that there is some “meaning” or “design” behind their actions.

Hat tip: Physics color commentator Rob Sheldon, author of Genesis: The Long Ascent.

See also: Panpsychism: You are conscious but so is your coffee mug Either everything is conscious or nothing is. Science says so.

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Which 2018 news trends will affect ID?

Here’s what merely increased: Vast complexity (a kill cancer code turns out to be embedded in every cell) has continued to be found, dating from a from a much earlier period than earlier supposed (fossilized bird lung tissue much like bird lung tissue today). And all far beyond the reach of normal probability. When were all the Darwinian mistakes supposed to have been made and then eliminated?

We don’t expect to hear much honest discussion yet but we do expect the gap to yawn wider.

Here’s what’s new: Darwinism is becoming less of an issue today because the social justice warriors are attacking the Darwinians now on the very concept of sex, as Darwinian Jerry Coyne and others have had cause to know. Individuals well known to us through their writings have also been SJWs’ direct targets ((Francisco Ayala, Larry Krauss, and Neil deGrasse Tyson come to mind).

It almost doesn’t matter much any more whether the stories are true or not. But that makes sense. If Darwinism is the single best idea anyone ever had and our brains are shaped for fitness, not truth, then the Darwinians are simply weaker animals than the social justice warriors.

In general, the SJW assault is, at a much more basic level, a repudiation of concepts like facts, evidence, and knowledge. In a society where people find that superstition enhances their lives, it’s not clear just yet what will become of the popular esteem for science overall or what that will mean, just for example, for us.

Here’s what’s pretty old by now: The social sciences got hoaxed again but in this atmosphere it doesn’t really matter. “Mis-gendering” dogs can be an issue if someone feels triggered or whatever.

Media and politicians will continue to depend on social science to provide easy factoids in pursuit of audience and power.

Here’s why it’s all happening the way it is: Underlying it all is the coffee mug problem: Is nature all there is? In that case, either you and your coffee mug are both conscious or neither of you are. Neither option yields a rational universe for science to study. But few seem to want to consider non-materialist options so the situation can only get worse and nuttier.

Here’s what hasn’t changed: Nothing whatever is happening that confirms naturalist atheism. The on/off switch for consciousness has not been found, free will has not been explained away, the quick fix for the random origin and development of life was never located, and legacy media are mostly clueless and incurious…

Well, Happy New Year! It’s going to be quite a show! – O’Leary for News

See also: Was 2018 kind of a quiet year for science? For example, Stephen Hawking (76) died. (Okay, but at his age, his obit was mostly written.) As Sabine Hossenfelder often points out, particle physics is in bad shape (“belly-up”) That became clearer in 2018 but who else wants to discuss it?

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Plato’s Library: Why information is the true source of new wealth

Jonathan Bartlett

Jonathan Bartlett explains the relationship between information and prosperity as set out in Eric Holloway’s new paper: our ability to “read from Plato’s Library” of new ideas provides us with an ever-growing supply of

side information that powers the economy:

Information theorists often use analogies from making bets to understand the impact of information on economics. Perhaps surprisingly, there are many structural similarities between betting at a casino and betting on a business (by starting or investing in it). Both start with outlays of capital which may decline to zero, be partially returned to you, or (as you hope) returned as a multiple. The difference is that, at the casino, the casino sets the odds for a payout. In business, the odds are set by external factors. But why is it that so many people can make money in business but few if any make money gambling at a casino?

The difference is that, in business, we can introduce “side information” to the problem of increasing our capital. Side information is information that we know but it isn’t simply dictated to us by the environment. Before the iPhone was invented, there was no known price that an iPhone would sell for. Apple CEO Steve Jobs had to draw on his own side information about what users wanted, needed, and would pay for, in order to make the bet that the iPhone would work out. It wasn’t a guarantee and Apple could have lost their investment. As it happened, the side information that Jobs brought to the table allowed Apple to not only make money for itself by selling phones but create opportunities for users to make money, thus adding to overall wealth. This was all done by using side information on what users wanted and needed in a phone.

This phenomenon of side information has been described primarily by two economists— George Gilder and Peter Thiel . More.

Jonathan Bartlett is the Research and Education Director of the Blyth Institute.

Also by Jonathan Bartlett: Google Search: Its secret of success revealed: The secret is not the Big Data pile. No, Google found a way to harness YOUR wants and needs

and

Be Choosy About What You Automate: Having automated many processes, I can assure you that that is the First Rule of Automation

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Was 2018 kind of a quiet year for science?

Here’s a Top Ten science stories list from a techie science mag I (O’Leary for News) regularly monitor and cite from:

This year taught us more about distant planets and our own world, about the ways we’re influencing our environment and the ways we’re changing ourselves. A whole lot of stuff happened, and last January seems like it was, well, a year ago. Ryan F. Mandelbaum, “The Biggest Science Stories of 2018” at Gizmodo

Okay, nothing in particular jumps out at Mandelbaum, who does a good job of gathering the information, and one can see why his tone is muted. Here are some of the Gizmodo picks:

– Mars exploration continues, space equipment is retired or commissioned (but still no hard evidence of life)

– Drinking and smoking still bad (true but not news) The Book of Proverbs in the Bible could have told you that and the only reason it doesn’t address smoking is that the weed had not made it out of the Americas yet.

– More natural disasters (It’s worth asking whether there are more or whether we have more information about them – one thing globalism has done is create a situation where an event in the Seychelles can be live in Newfoundland. And vice versa. )

– Scientists continued to warn about climate change (it would be news if they stopped)

– Scientists got organized (Actually, that was news as a 2017 story.) The real story won’t come until the scientists have to grapple with the takeover of this sort of “March” politics by anti-Semitism, for example. Then they will face a defining choice: Scientists or Social Justice Warriors?

– We learned more about our history as humans (Mostly along the lines of “earlier than thought” and we still need to put some of that together.)

– Stephen Hawking (76) died. (Okay, but at his age, his obit was mostly written.) As Sabine Hossenfelder often points out, particle physics is in bad shape (“belly-up”) That became clearer in 2018 but who else wants to discuss it? See: Will the Large Hadron Collider doom particle physics?

Okay, life goes on and we learn from it or hope to.

I (O’Leary for News) will discuss some newer developments in the areas we cover in the next post.

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Top Ten AI Hype Countdown 1: IBM’s Watson Is Not Our New Computer Overlord

AI help, not hype, with Robert J. Marks: Watson won at Jeopardy (with specially chosen “softball” questions) but is not the hoped-for aid to cancer specialists:

Originally, IBM pitched its Watson supercomputer as a revolution in marshalling the flood of new medical information so as to enable better cancer care. Hundreds of medical papers are published each day. No one can read them all. So when a patient has cancer, a physician could tell Watson the details and Watson could dig through the papers and identify the relevant ones. It did not turn out to be that simple, according to STAT News:

…three years after IBM began selling Watson to recommend the best cancer treatments to doctors around the world, a STAT investigation has found that the supercomputer isn’t living up to the lofty expectations IBM created for it. It is still struggling with the basic step of learning about different forms of cancer. Only a few dozen hospitals have adopted the system, which is a long way from IBM’s goal of establishing dominance in a multibillion-dollar market. And at foreign hospitals, physicians complained its advice is biased toward American patients and methods of care.

The failure is not mainly that of AI:

The interviews suggest that IBM, in its rush to bolster flagging revenue, unleashed a product without fully assessing the challenges of deploying it in hospitals globally. While it has emphatically marketed Watson for cancer care, IBM hasn’t published any scientific papers demonstrating how the technology affects physicians and patients. As a result, its flaws are getting exposed on the front lines of care by doctors and researchers who say that the system, while promising in some respects, remains undeveloped. Casey Ross and Ike Swetlitz, “IBM pitched its Watson supercomputer as a revolution in cancer care. It’s nowhere close” at STAT

Then there was the breathless hype journalism, which made it difficult to discuss serious problems in context.

More.

See also: 2018 AI Hype Countdown 2: AI Can Write Novels and Screenplays Better than the Pros! AI help, not hype: It turns out that meaning matters. So. fiction and song writers, please do keep writing. Don’t leave us with just this stuff in 2019.

2018 AI Hype Countdown 3: With Mind-reading AI, You Will Never Have Secrets Again! AI help, not hype: Did you read about the flap they had to cut out of a volunteer’s skull? With so many new developments in AI, the real story is usually far down in the fine print. And not a close match with the headlines.

2018 AI Hype Countdown 4: Making AI Look More Human Makes It More Human-like! AI help, not hype: Technicians can do a lot these days with automated lip-syncs and smiles but what’s behind them? This summer, some were simply agog over “Sophia, the First Robot Citizen” (“unsettling as it is awe-inspiring”)…

2018 AI Hype Countdown 4: Making AI Look More Human Makes It More Human-like! AI help, not hype: Technicians can do a lot these days with automated lip-syncs and smiles but what’s behind them? This summer, some were simply agog over “Sophia, the First Robot Citizen” (“unsettling as it is awe-inspiring”)…

2018 AI Hype Countdown 5: AI Can Fight Hate Speech! AI help, not hype: AI can carry out its programmers’ biases and that’s all. Putting these kinds of decisions in the hands of software programs is not likely to promote vigorous and healthy debate.

2018 AI Hype Countdown 6: AI Can Even Find Loopholes in the Code! AI help, not hype: AI adopts a solution in an allowed set, maybe not the one you expected.

2018 AI Hype Countdown 7: Computers can develop creative solutions on their own! AI help, not hype: Programmers may be surprised by which solution, from a range they built in, comes out on top Sometimes the results are unexpected and even surprising. But they follow directly from the program doing exactly what the programmer programmed it to do. It’s all program, no creativity.

2018 AI Hype Countdown 8: AI Just Needs a Bigger Truck! AI help, not hype: Can we create superintelligent computers just by adding more computing power? Some think computers could greatly exceed human intelligence if only we added more computing power. That reminds me of an old story…

2018 AI Hype Countdown 9: Will That Army Robot Squid Ever Be “Self-Aware”? The thrill of fear invites the reader to accept a metaphorical claim as a literal fact.

2018 AI Hype Countdown: 10. Is AI really becoming “human-like”?: AI help, not hype: Here’s #10 of our Top Ten AI hypes, flops, and spins of 2018 A headline from the UK Telegraph reads “DeepMind’s AlphaZero now showing human-like intuition in historical ‘turning point’ for AI” Don’t worry if you missed it.

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