MailBag (AI + Randomness of the human mind)

These are some of the handpicked responses from the feedback I received after sharing my piece, Will AI match randomness of a human mind? (If you have not read it, please click through.) The letters are edited for space. I want to encourage all of you to write back with thoughts and suggestions as we grow this community together. 

I don’t think the mind is random at all. I think that the entire business/culture/paradigm/worldview of computer scientists and  AI evangelists is missing a far deeper and more fundamental issue: the intrinsic, inherent, essential embeddedness of the human mind in the biology of the human body. The human mind is nothing more or less than a function/process/aspect/emergent phenomenon of the human brain, which evolved to serve the body in a wide variety of adaptive purposes.

The two substantive bodies of knowledge which inform my perspective are 

(1) from neuroscientists, the most relevant of whom is Antonio Damasio (Self Comes To Mind details the relevant fact base and is a great read.), and 

(2) from cognitive scientists, the most relevant of whom is George Lakoff (Philosophy in the Flesh: The embodied mind and its challenge to western thought develops the argument and gives plenty of compelling examples.)

Since my thinking comes from outside rather than inside (what I take to be) your frame of reference, experience has taught me not to attempt to make a specific argument. If you take the time to dip into Damasio and Lakoff and want to have a conversation about the larger issue, I’m game. – David Greene

Just completed audible book series by Dennis E. Taylor “Bobiverse”. Awesome take on bridging the gap between AI and human random mind. When I saw your email, what a coincidence. — EB

This immediately brought to mind Hugh Howey’s recent AI piece for Wired. – Eliot Peper 

I quite frequently get glimpses of my childhood memories from 10-15 years ago and I always wonder how did I still remember those minute things. As an AI researcher, I believe we need to develop a different kind of hardware to even give machines just a bit of our cognitive capabilities. – Surya Teja Cheedella

AI will never take the place of a human mind. It can’t replicate emotion, it can only learn patterns. There’ll always be a place for the human heart, even long after Silicon Valley’s reproduced the mind. — Dawn Casey-Rowe

You are spot-on. I believe even the name A.I. is a contradiction in terms & will be for a long time. It makes for good headlines esp. dystopian! However, just a little thought will tell you that learning to identify issues whilst scanning X-Rays, or winning Jeopardy are a long way from intelligence. They are also, as you point out, a million miles away from recreating memories - and that is just one of the marvelous things our minds can do.A little more thought would help the acceptance of machine usage in society. – Kevan Bradley

This article captures a piece of what makes us human - all our memories and the function of recall which is as you said random and mysterious. It is interesting that is asking - what is human, what is a machine, we can discover more and more about what it means to be human. – Ruth Alice