Sentience by Nicholas Humphre The MIT Press, 2023 Nicholas Humphrey is a thinker, a distinguished scientist, a psychologist and philosopher,…
My morning scan of internet news sources—reputable, disreputable, licit, and illicit—unearthed the tantalizing headline, “The true story of the fake…
(Unless otherwise indicated, all quotations are from the paper listed as #1 in the reference section) In a recent paper…
John Searle John Searle’s Chinese Room (1) thought experiment is often used as an argument for why AI is not,…
I only came upon Ian McEwan’s science fiction/alternate history novel about artificial intelligence by happenstance. In a Facebook post, people…
Ralf Stapelfeldt recently criticized Nick Bostrom’s idea of Superintelligence by asking the question, “Can there be a dumb Superintelligence?1” Stapelfeldt…
Observer by Robert Lanza and Nancy Kress Story Plant: 2023 Sometimes scientists turn to science fiction to express their ideas…
I’ve read rave reviews of Robert Lanza’s and Nancy Kress’ science fiction novel, Observer. After learning that it is based…
One of the masters of so-called, “hard” science fiction is Arthur C. Clarke. With degrees in mathematics and physics, Clarke…
“Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and…
In Cixin Liu’s “The Dark Forest,” the second book in the Chinese sci-fi writer’s “The Three-Body Problem” series, an alien…
What is it like to be a plant? Planta Sapiens: The New Science of Plant Intelligence By Paco Calvo with…
I’m always writing a book. Well, not writing, actually, but working on a book anyway. Right now, I’m doing research…
Being You: A New Science of Consciousness By Anil Seth Dutton, 2021 Book Review I have to admit that…