Mary Martin

sensationalist headlines conjuring fears of a techno-dystopian near-future overshadow more material issues over AI ethics that already exist – including how they reflect human biases, and the many ways in which they’re capable of manipulating users.

An experiment seven years in the making has uncovered new insights into the nature of consciousness and challenges two prominent, competing scientific theories: Integrated Information Theory (IIT) and Global Neuronal Workspace Theory (GNWT).

1. IIT suggests that consciousness emerges when information inside a system (like the brain) is highly connected

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A lot of effective altruism organizations have made AI x-risk their top cause in the last few years,” explains Sayash Kapoor from Princeton. “That means a lot of the people who are getting funding to do AI research are naturally inclined, but also have been specifically selected, for their interest in reducing AI x-risk.”

Thus, the interest in AI... See more

contemporary societies seem to care about three things: national prosperity, social cohesion and stability, and personal well-being. But the personal attitudes that will lead towards these three ‘goods’ are not eternal: they depend on the nature of the world. So even if those three aspirations are taken for granted, educational values — the traits... See more

The relationship between utopia and futurescape is thus cardinal because the former serves to host scenarios of futures, while futurescapes are the projects that give consistency and form to utopias.

recent research offers a reassuring perspective—that AI-delivered therapeutic interventions have reached a level of sophistication such that they’re indistinguishable from human-written therapeutic responses.

We build upon the key fact that the brain is (part of) the body and as such, like any other bodily organ, the brain is made of cells. The focus on cellular rather than neural, brain processing allows us to underscore the idea that flexible responses to changes in the environments requires flexible adjustments not only through neural, but also... See more