Ai and Robots

Filmmaker Werner Herzog asks: “Does the internet dream of itself?”

Presidential candidates currently fall into two camps. In the first, you have about 20 Republican and Democratic front-runners who have received political endorsements or significant national…

The following essay contains some minor spoilers. – eds. Imagine a world where robots look, act, and function like human beings, minus consciousness or free will. They’ve been programmed to take over…

The cognitive scientist Douglas Hofstadter is well known for his pioneering work on artificial intelligence, his brilliant writing about language and identity, and for his classic, Pulitzer Prize…

Artificial intelligence is taking over—at least in Hollywood. In 2013, there was Spike Jonze’s acclaimed Her. This year, there’s been Chappie and Ex Machina, both centered on the trials and triumphs…

Talking transhumanism with R.U. Sirius and Jay Cornell.

There are places you never expect to be in life. For me, this was certainly one of them…

The paranoid few who seem genuinely disturbed by the possibility of the coming end of the world may be responding the most reasonably to current events. Or not. This ambiguity is at the heart of Jeff Nichols’ recent film Take Shelter. The film explores whether its protagonist is crazy, or a prophet, or both.

Scientists like roboticist Hans Moravec and inventor Ray Kurzweil advocate uploading our minds into robots or virtual reality so that we can live forever. They believe that our minds can be replicated outside of our brains if we simply copy the pattern of neuro-chemical activity taking place in our bodies. That pattern, rather than the brains in which the pattern takes shape, “is” the personality. If it can be transferred to a digital medium, it can be made immortal. Surpassingly intelligent robots—our Mind Children, according to Moravec—will populate the universe, converting physical reality into a cosmic interweb of thinking machines.

Packed with conspiracy theories, while claiming to be about sustainability.