Note: Mind Matters News is made possible by support from the Walter Bradley Center for Natural and Artificial Intelligence, a project of the non-profit Discovery Institute. Here is a report of our activities for 2022. If you benefit from the work of Mind Matters News, could you donate to support our work in 2023?
Humans are unique and will never be replaced by the machines they invent.
That was the powerful takeaway from this year’s new book by Walter Bradley Center Director Robert J. Marks, Non-Computable You: What You Do that Artificial Intelligence Never Will.
The release of Marks’ book was one of many ways that the Bradley Center advanced its mission in 2022 to defend human dignity and creativity while exploring the differences between natural and artificial intelligence.
Algorithmic information theory pioneer Gregory Chaitin called Non-Computable You “delightful” and “well-reasoned.” Bart Kosko of the University of Southern California said it “throws a big bucket of informed cold water on the runaway brushfire of Big-Tech hype that makes up far too much of modern AI.” Noted philosopher J.P. Moreland described it as the “definitive book on the relationship between artificial intelligence and human consciousness.” Jacek Zurada of the University of Louisville said it was “written brilliantly” and observed that Marks was “an expert who served as Editor in Chief of a leading AI journal and who helped lay the foundations of the field.”
Dr. Marks participated in over 40 media interviews for the book, including talk shows on major radio stations such as WABC in New York City and WHO in Iowa, a talk show syndicated by Bloomberg Radio, and the national television show Book Notes on C-SPAN.
Marks was also featured discussing key themes from the book in the video “Artificial Intelligence: Will Machines Take Over?,” a new episode of the popular YouTube series Science Uprising. Released in September, the video has already attracted over 300,000 views. Other experts featured in the episode include Bradley Center Senior Fellow Jay Richards, Oxford University mathematician John Lennox, and Rensselaer Polytechnic University AI researcher Selmer Bringsjord.
The Bradley Center also continued to expand its public impact through its Mind Matters News website and podcast. The website published over 800 articles in 2022 and attracted over 2.3 million users, representing more than 100% growth in its audience since 2020. A number of Mind Matters News articles went viral this year, most notably a piece reporting on claims and counterclaims about the Big Bang arising from the findings of the James Web Space Telescope. That article alone received more than 740,000 page views.
The Mind Matters podcast, meanwhile, released over 40 new episodes, exploring topics such as “EMPs, Swarms and Other Types of Terrifying Technology,” “The Astonishing Algorithms That Allow Animals to Navigate and Migrate,” “Web3: The Next Generation of the Internet,” “Top Gun, HAL 9000, and Jobs of the Future,” and even “Can A Good Hustler Count Cards Like A Computer?”
Finally, the Bradley Center was the lead sponsor for another COSM Tech Summit, the annual event hosted by George Gilder that draws investors, tech leaders, and entrepreneurs from around the world. This year’s all-star line-up included tech entrepreneur Peter Thiel, former CEO and Chair of Google Eric Schmidt, former CEO of DocuSign Keith Krach, and physicist Federico Faggin, who designed the first commercial microprocessor. Fellows from Discovery Institute and the Bradley Center were well-represented at the event, including mathematician and entrepreneur William Dembski, philosopher Jay Richards, computer engineer Robert J. Marks, and economist Gale Pooley.
A highlight of this year’s COSM was the panel discussion on “AI: Friend or Foe.” The session featured former Google AI researcher Blake Lemoine, who was fired by Google after making national headlines by suggesting that the company’s artificial intelligence technology called LaMDA had become sentient. Lemoine participated in a lively but respectful discussion moderated by Matt McIlwain, Managing Director of Madrona Venture Group, and featuring Bradley Center Director Robert J. Marks and computer scientist George Montañez of Harvey Mudd College.
Work continued in 2022 on a major book exploring how the mind is more than the brain. That volume, Minding the Brain, is expected to be released sometime in 2023.