Seven Years On, the Mind vs. Machine Debate Hasn’t Aged
Are we any closer to Strong AI and the Singularity than we were in 2019? Don’t bet on it. On this classic episode of ID the Future from the archive, Andrew McDiarmid catches up with philosopher Jay Richards at the 2019 COSM conference in Seattle. The two discuss the history of George Gilder’s Telecosm conferences and how the first one gave birth to a book Richards edited and contributed to 18 years ago, Are We Spiritual Machines? Ray Kurzweil vs. the Critics of Strong A.I.
Is the “singularity” coming, as Kurzweil argues there and elsewhere, when machines equal and then quickly surpass human intelligence? Does “machine learning” really mean learning? Will “Skynet” wake up? Jay describes Kurzweil’s sunny version of strong AI and the dystopian version. Then he argues the other side, namely that human beings possess something beyond the purely material, something even the most powerful computers will never possess.
Seven years later, are the points Dr. Richards makes still relevant? Tune in to find out why!
Dig Deeper
- Get a copy of Gilder’s book Are We Spiritual Machines?
- Watch Dr. Robert Marks explain why humans are not just meat machines: