Cory DoctorowThis profile of me in *The New Yorker* came out really well, if I do say so myself:
Gsoc@pluralistic All problems with AI raise from the sensitive applications these systems are blindly used for. AI is just a blanket term for "statistics-guided algorithm": AI is not "intelligent". AI algorithms (in particular deep learning) can encode correlations in data and therefore highlight such correlations in other data, but there is no magic behind it. We need to remember that *correlation does not imply causation*.
areswhat if animal and human intelligence is also just a "statistics-guided algorithm"
@ares @pluralistic This is a very deep question that would require more than 500 characters to reply to. Federico Faggin (the physicist that invented the microprocessor) says that no computer can be conscious and the fact that living creatures are can be explained because our world is governed also by quantum laws. Moreover, if we were guided by statistics only we wouldn't have free will and we would be misled by spurious correlations (https://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations). See also: http://www.fagginfoundation.org/articles/what-is-consciousness/
