CONCEPTUAL FOUNDATIONS OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

Timetable

Module aim (aims)

The course is aimed at deepening participants’ insights into conceptual foundations of AI. By AI we understand: the discipline; AI thesis; AI artifacts; and the issue of AI.
The CAI course will cover the following issues:
– The history of the idea of AI—from Golem legends to modern trans-humanistic views.
– Paradigms in the field of AI (GOFAI, connectionism, artificial life, modern ideas of human computation).
– What does it mean to be (artificially) intelligent? Strong vs. weak AI (J. Searle’s thesis and its critics).
– How can we tell if an agent is intelligent? Turing test and its derivatives (Loebner contest, Minimal
intelligent signal test, Lady Lovelace test, CAPTCHA systems).
– Is AI possible at all? Counterarguments for the possibility of AI: consciousness, common knowledge
(frame problem), limitation theorems.

Pre-requisites in terms of knowledge, skills and social competences (where relevant)

Students should pass the Epistemology (or equivalent) module to attend CAI.

Syllabus

What is AI? History of the AI idea.
How to make AI idea come true? AI paradigms.
What does it mean to be intelligence. Weak and strong AI.
The computational mind theory. How does it influence AI and cognitive science research.
The Turing test and more. Chat-bots, human-computer interaction and natural language.
The Turing test and more. How to design better tests for thinking machines?
Philosophical and ethical arguments against AI.
Arguments against AI – the frame problem.
Arguments against AI – limitation theorems.

Reading list

– Block, N. (1995), The mind as the software of the brain, w: E. Smith, D. Osherson, (red.), An Invitation to Cognitive Science—Thinking (s. 377–425), The MIT Press, Londyn.
– Lucas, J. R. (1961), Minds, Machines and Gödel, Philosophy, XXXVI, 112–127.
– Moravec, H. (1999), Rise of the Robots. Scientific American, December 1999, 124–135.
– Putnam, H. (1960). Minds and Machines, w: Sidney Hook, (red.), Dimensions of Mind (s. 148–180), New York: New York University Press, 1960 . Przedruk w: Mind, Language and Reality, 1975, 362–385.
– Searle, J. R. (1980) Minds, brains, and programs. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 3 (3): 417–457.
– Turing, A.M. (1950). Computing machinery and intelligence. Mind, 59, 433-460.