The five philosophical disagreements underneath every AI argument
blog.cosmos-institute.org · 2,979 words · saved by 1 readers
You were seeing castles, they were seeing sand
Most AI debates aren’t really about evidence. Instead, they’re arguments about futures that none of us have seen. Nobody has seen superintelligence, a machine that most people agree is conscious, or a fully automated economy. Evidence can be gathered, but it underdetermines the conclusion. To fill the gap, we fall back on a combination of philosophy, political intuitions or, in some cases, tribal identity. What you think a mind is, how knowledge grows, how societies should act under uncertainty, whether intelligence carries values, and whether markets can absorb technological shocks will…
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