I think that Artificial Intelligence has the potential to change the way philosophy is being done, but that's no great insight - there are so many ways to do philosophy. Also, philosophy has a great potential to affect the way AI is done, there's an enormous literature out there that could be usefuly mined or scraped!
As an aside, i just recently found out that Turing's famous paper on the eponymous test was published in Mind, a philosophy journal of the time, and in his list of possible objections to his thesis, he considered extra-sensory perception (that's telepathy and all the weird paranormal stuff) as the most serious one. Weird times just seventy years ago, huh? :)
Best Wishes,
Haris
That's a great question - although just possibly a bit premature.
What we call "artificial intelligence" today is not intelligent at all : it is purely Big Data, and nothing else.
Contemporary AI is very capable of sifting through zillions and zillions of pages, data, databanks etc., which is enormously helpful in finding and making use of any precedents and/or in uncovering obscure laws etc. - in law, in medicine, etc. : it's capable of finding more relevant data than could ever possibly be known and borne in mind by any human operator.
But our current AI is utterly unable to come up with anything truly new. It only trawls through reams and reams of existing, legacy data in order to help with any task or question, but it cannot suggest anything truly original.
In that sense, it won't threaten in the least the role of philosophy in its exploration of questions truly at the leading edges of human knowledge, appreciation, and endeavor.
There may possibly come a time when AI becomes truly intelligent and hence truly innovative, with innovation not based on legacy - which would open up a whole new pandora box of associated questions and uncontrollable risks. I'm not sure this would be a necessarily benign development...
There is also a related question, I believe, of what AI and any future associated enhanced physical abilities can come to mean for mankind. I for one believe it could behoove and add value to our unfolding journey in the universe :
Article A Spiritual Case for Transhumanism?
- Badges
- Science topic
- Similar topics
- Linguistics
- Composition Studies
- Publication