Do Androids Dream?
The philosopher John Searle’s concept of Intentionality and his Chinese Room experiment reveal the differences between AI computation and human thought.
Sean Welsh
· 12 min read
AI
A collection of 49 posts
Artificial Barriers to Intelligence
How AI training produces evasion over engagement.
P. Stanley
· 9 min read
Algorithmic Supremacists and AI Hype
Amid all the overexcitement about artificial intelligence, there is little room for public consideration of mind-blowing findings on natural intelligence.
David Weitzner
· 10 min read
Terminators and Parrots: AI in the Era of GPTs
The hyperbole surrounding AGI misrepresents the capabilities of current AI systems and distracts attention from the real threats that these systems are creating.
Shalom Lappin
· 9 min read
Robot Ethics and Colonial Legacies with Sean Welsh | Quillette Cetera Ep. 53
Philosopher and programmer Sean Welsh talks with Zoe Booth about AI, colonial history, and why scepticism is the best guide through both technology and politics.
Zoe Sankey, Sean Welsh
· 15 min read
ChatGPT-5 and the Limits of Machine Intelligence
The disillusion produced by GPT-5 is not a technical hiccup, it’s a philosophical wake-up call.
Hugh Brosnahan
· 6 min read
AI and the Death of Literary Criticism
The discipline of English literature seems unlikely to survive the coming technological tsunami—and maybe it doesn’t deserve to. And I say this as a professor of English, who believes in the power of the written word.
Thomas P. Balazs
· 8 min read
Podcast #284: Lessons from the Luddites on Adapting to AI
Quillette podcast host Jonathan Kay speaks with Washington Post columnist and TED Talker Megan McArdle about the short-term pain—and long-term gain—heralded by the AI revolution.
Quillette
· 2 min read
This Is Not Late-Stage Capitalism
Automation, artificial intelligence, and robotics are set to redefine the relationship between labour, capital, and production.
John Aziz
· 7 min read
My Friend the Chatbot
Virtual friends are already good enough to engage us and satisfy some of our appetites. They are going to get better, spread into more corners of our lives, and settle in.
Rob Brooks
· 10 min read
‘Superintelligence,’ Ten Years On
AI catastrophe is easy to imagine, but a lot has to go consistently and infallibly wrong for the doom theory to pan out.
Sean Welsh
· 12 min read
The Digital Mirror of Narcissus
Technology steers my life along tracks chosen for my digital double, not for me. But this proxy personalisation wouldn’t work at all if I didn’t play my part.
Timandra Harkness
· 11 min read
ChatGPT’s Moral Compass
We hear much talk of “aligning AI with human values” but relatively little delineation of what these values are.
Sean Welsh
· 15 min read
One Year Since the AI Pause Petition
Just because we can imagine something terrible happening, that does not mean it will happen.
Mathias Sundin
· 10 min read
Google and the Gemini Debacle
This cock-up was not caused by a bug that went unnoticed; it was deliberately engineered.
Toadworrier
· 9 min read