AI Colloquium: Fred Keijzer

Fred Keijzer
Theoretical Philosophy
University of Groningen

“Philosophy of the future”
How sciencefiction views artificial intelligence

Abstract:
Artifical Intelligence is a big thing within current science fiction. While the practice of AI remains a bit behind, within science fiction there are no limits. One encounters a wide range of sometimes intriguing options. Of course there are extremely intelligent artifical ‘minds’ that more often than not rule the world better than any human ever did. Of course there are also robots, ships, golems, habitats and other technological artifacts inhabited by their own AI’s. In addition, one comes across a range of options for biologicals to turn artificial. Uploading minds is common, with or without downloading into an artifical or biological body (you don’t need any body if you make the world virtual). Of course, last but not least there is the Singularity, the mythical moment when we reach a treshold of artifical machines that become capable of developing even more intelligent machines and so on in an exponential process of ‘upsmarting’. It’s wonderful stuff. More down to earth are two questions: To what extent will these visions be realizable at all? Second, given that the current and predictable future achievements of AI lag behind these beautiful visions, how does the presence of such visions impact on the field? This talk is based on my book (in Dutch) Filosofie van de toekomst, to appear in May with Lemniscaat.