ArchiveArticles
Arts major cracks hard math through practice, practice, practice
She became an engineering prof that way. The war on math is certainly not over but the warriors may be starting to find themselves on the back foot
Bill Dembski at COSM 2023
The mathematician and philosopher chats about AI and the questions it raisesEvery COSM conference, Discovery Institute Senior Fellow Jay Richards sits down with some of the keynote speakers to debrief and discuss important and relevant topics. Here, Richards is joined by mathematician, philosopher, and entrepreneur William (Bill) Dembski, author of over two dozen books, including Being as Communion: A Metaphysics of Information (2014). Together they discuss the limits and possibilities of AI, the philosophical questions posed by some of these new technologies, and the “conversations” Dembski has had with ChatGPT. Watch the short interview now and enjoy access to ALL of last year’s star-studded COSM conference.
Applying the Theory of Intelligent Design
What are ID's implications for economics, metaphysics, and computer science?As my PhD advisor Dr. Robert Marks likes to say: “You have to make the queen of the sciences get down and scrub the floors.” Intelligent design (ID) is a science, and so ID has to get down and scrub the floors. To further this goal, I’ve come up with a schema for the ways in which ID can be applied, and what it in fact means for ID to be applied. The upshot of this schema is not only to guide brainstorming, but it also demonstrates that ID is already applied in many areas, unbeknownst to all. As they say, the best way to get something done is to take credit for someone else’s work. First, let’s identify what ID is. ID is Read More ›
Einstein Meets Lemaître
The significance of Lemaître’s work remained mostly unnoticed for three years
Bizarre New iPad Pro Ad Says the Quiet Part Out Loud
Witnessing the rise of anti-human corporate techYesterday, Apple CEO Tim Cook shared the brand-new preview of the “thinnest iPad” to date, the iPad Pro, praising its portability and capacity. Capitalizing on the “thin” aspect, the promo commercial, titled “Crush!” has been turning heads and could also be accused of crushing the human spirit. The commercial plays to the song “All I Need is You” by Sonny & Cher, opening up with a metronome and a record player. Then, the scene broadens out to show a platform in the middle of a room piled with an array of gadgets and knickknacks, like a drum set, cans of paint, a trumpet, piano, bust of a Greco-Roman figure, a globe, chess set, and other goods that the mind naturally Read More ›
Researchers: Bonobos Are More, Not Less, Aggressive Than Chimps
Tracking males of both types of ape every waking hour shattered the pop science “hippie ape” illusion
Is TikTok a National Security Risk?
Consuming without thinking is fertile soil for propaganda
The Financial World Has Lost the Plot
Cathie Wood on the investment opportunities of the future.“I feel as though the financial world has lost the plot,” said Cathie Wood, CEO of Ark Invest, in last year’s star-studded COSM conference. Investors are avoiding risk and investing in safe but unpromising world of the past, said Wood, who went on to discuss the “trends and investment opportunities in technologies related to public blockchains, multiomic sequencing, energy storage, and robotics, that are tied together by advances in artificial intelligence.” Watch her intriguing talk below and let us know what you think of it in the comments! The fourth and final sequence of COSM 2023 videos have now been added to our YouTube channel, so you can enjoy a host of stimulating talks, panels, and conversations about artificial intelligence, Read More ›
Final Release of COSM 2023 Videos!
The fourth and final tranche of COSM 2023 videos is now available.The fourth and final tranche of COSM 2023 videos is now available — featuring topics such as how advances in artificial intelligence may affect automobile transportation, solutions to the vast amounts of energy artificial intelligence will require, and why we might be on the brink of seeing the most disruptive innovations the world has ever seen. If you weren’t able to attend, or perhaps you want to revisit some of your favorite speakers, take a look at our COSM 2023 playlist on YouTube! A few highlights of the recently released videos: You can also watch backstage interviews, in which Senior Fellow Jay Richards goes into greater depth with several speakers on the topics addressed onstage. Click here to go to Read More ›
Again with the ‘Plants Are Intelligent’ Nonsense
It seems to me that the ultimate point of these “plants are persons too”–type stories is to undermine human exceptionalism
Can an Atheist Believe in Life After Death?
An atheist philosopher makes the case at Closer to Truth
Was Darwinian Philosopher Daniel Dennett the End of an Era?
Dennett’s image of the human mind as a user-illusion was very fashionable but it never made any sense
What Chatbots Have Achieved, and What They Haven’t — and Can’t
Chatbots (LLMs) succeeded where the older expert systems I used to work on failed but that does not mean that they are creative
I, Robot Review, Part 2: The Ghosts in the Machine
Dr. Lanning describes these ghosts as random segments of code and asks questions like why robots choose to stand together rather than alone when they’re stored in a dark place
The Uniqueness of the Human Writer
LLMs are shortcuts, but sometimes the shortcut makes you miss the point of the journey
Does ChatGPT Think?
Are Large Language Models like ChatGPT capable of legitimate thought?It’s one of the hot topic questions and will almost certainly continue to be. Are Large Language Models like ChatGPT capable of legitimate thought? And what counts as “thinking”? Is there a quality to the concept that makes it distinctly human, or are the tech futurists right? Can AI computation be considered a type of cognitive activity? Stephen Wolfram, George Gilder, and Bob Metcalfe spoke on the possibilities and limits of AI at last year’s star-studded COSM conference. We are experiencing watershed moments in technology, with lots of hype to go along with it, but are we putting the cart before the horse in some cases? Discover more in this special recording on YouTube.
Don’t Trust AI to Sketch Your Suspects
The resemblance is definitely NOT uncanny in this caseA man broke into an old woman’s house recently, and after being described to the police in Kent, England, an AI image of the fellow was rendered. Usually, of course, an artist will sketch the profile of the criminal suspect based on details provided by the witness, but now AI is having its shot; only, the result was laughable. The profile looked like it could have come from the 2008 version of the Wii. It isn’t detailed, the neck and head aren’t ratioed like a real person’s would be, and it just simply came out cartoonish. Frank Landymore reported on the incident over at Futurism, writing, The suspect is described as being a white man around five feet, five inches Read More ›
Economics Assumes Human Beings Have Free Will
Every waking moment we humans live out a constant fact underlying all economic science: we act.“Free will denial is a cornerstone of materialist–determinist ideology,” wrote Dr. Michael Egnor here in February 2024. The deniers say we are “purely physical machines, meat robots.” Dr. Egnor cited well-known people who have prominently denied humans have free will. Dr. Egnor challenged deniers to demonstrate through their own actions that they truly have no free will. They will fail for Dr. Egnor’s stated reasons, plus one more: economics. The science of economics describes the behaviors of individual humans as they pursue their lives. Economics has discovered certainties, such as the Law of Supply and Demand, that describe how people produce, consume, trade, save, invest, and anticipate the future. Economics succeeds because it grasps certain universal truths about free-will, non-material, Read More ›
Beyond Social Media’s Impact on Mental Health
Social media addiction can harm more than our moodsA young writer, herself a member of Gen Z, has dared to point out the obvious about social media. Sure, it’s verifiably making us sad and anxious, but it goes beyond that: it’s turning us into bad people. Freya India, a columnist at Quillette and a new contributor to Jonathan Haidt’s Substack After Babel, notes that while it’s important to talk about social media and mental health, it’s just as vital to talk about what this stuff is doing to our character. She writes, Our loss of empathy, our lack of regard for others, our neurotic obsession with our own image — it’s taking a toll. Maybe subconsciously. But I think deep down we know it. We know when people are using Read More ›