In this episode, Nick and Paul discuss the emergence of Artificial Intelligence and the critical question: What does it mean to be human in the age of AI?
Nick and Paul discuss:
Intelligence and the Turing Test: Examining the definition of intelligence, the limitations of computational capacity, and the philosophical significance of the Turing Test.
Emotions vs. Logic: Using the Voigt-Kampff test from Blade Runner (1982), they contrast human emotional responses with the strictly logical outputs of...
In this episode, Nick and Paul discuss the emergence of Artificial Intelligence and the critical question: What does it mean to be human in the age of AI?
Nick and Paul discuss:
-
Intelligence and the Turing Test: Examining the definition of intelligence, the limitations of computational capacity, and the philosophical significance of the Turing Test.
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Emotions vs. Logic: Using the Voigt-Kampff test from Blade Runner (1982), they contrast human emotional responses with the strictly logical outputs of machines.
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The Loss of Vocation and Craft: Concern over AI displacing white-collar workers and the resulting alienation and loss of meaning derived from one's trade or craft.
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Arendt and the Human Condition: Discussing Hannah Arendt's work, The Human Condition, and the crucial connection between hand, brain, and work for human flourishing.
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The Educational Crisis: The impact of AI on learning, including the alarming rise of student reliance on AI to generate essays and the concept of hallucination in LLMs.
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Creativity and the Algorithm: Questioning if AI-generated music and poetry are genuine creativity or merely the highly sophisticated execution of algorithmic formulas.
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Historical Disruption: Comparing the AI revolution to past technological shifts, drawing on literary examples like Dickens's Hard Times and Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath.
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The Problem of Consumerism: Reflecting on the "unnaturalness" of the cult of optimisation in late-stage capitalism and the loss of traditional rhythms like the Biblical Sabbath.
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The Poet's Perspective: Dr. Monk's personal decision not to use AI to augment his writing, as it lacks feeling and the poems would not be authentically his creation.
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Transhumanism and the Singularity: Considering the terrifying prospect of a transhuman reality where machine acceleration (the Singularity) may ultimately challenge the meaning of being an embodied intelligence.
Dr Paul Monk is a poet, polymath and highly regarded Australian public intellectual. He has written an extraordinary range of books, from Sonnets to a Promiscuous Beauty (which resides in former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull’s library), to reflective essays on the riches of Western civilisation in The West in a Nutshell, to a prescient 2005 treatise on the rise of China in Thunder from the Silent Zone: Rethinking China.
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