Tag Archives: Robotics

Grabbing the Tiger by The Tail: Holding On For Dear Life to The Part of Myself that AI Will Never Replace

AI uses expansive memory to make accurate predictions of the next word in a series of words. Memory and talking are fundamental to being human, and we fear that AI will replace them. But because memory and talking have built-in limits, human life extends beyond them to a part of ourselves that AI cannot replace. We have called this our “higher” or “true” self, but it is simply the part of ourselves outside of memory. AI challenges us to fully embrace this part of ourselves, since we’re in the process of turning over our talking- and memory-selves to the machines.

God’s AI Reckoning: The Final Revelation

As artificial intelligence grows more capable, it’s reshaping how humanity confronts belief. This essay explores how machines now pose questions once reserved for prophets and philosophers—disrupting spiritual traditions, simulating consciousness, and reinterpreting faith as a cognitive inheritance. From data-driven skepticism to the algorithmic search for meaning, AI isn’t just analyzing religion—it’s participating in the inquiry. Drawing on philosophy, neuroscience, and cultural reflection, the piece asks: when machines illuminate what was once unknowable, does divinity fade… or evolve?

What 70 years of AI on film can tell us about the human relationship with artificial intelligence

Paula Murphy is an Assistant Professor in the School of English in Dublin City University, specializing in popular film, especially film and technology, and Irish literature and film, with an emphasis on new and marginal voices.
“I have just published a book on representations of artificial intelligence in film, AI in the Movies, with Edinburgh University Press, and a number of related journal articles:
– ‘”You Feel Real to Me, Samantha”: The Matter of Technology in Spike Jonze’s Her’. In Technoculture: An Online Journal of Technology in Society, Vol 7, 2018.
– ‘“Through the Looking Glass”: Bodies of Data in Alex Garland’s Ex-Machina’. Film International, 17.3: 79-85.
-‘‘Writers and Writers of Writers: Creativity and Authorship in the First AI Novel’. Kritikos: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal of Postmodern Cultural Sound, Text and Image. Vol 19, Fall/ Winter, 2023.”

A neuroscientist explains why it’s impossible for AI to ‘understand’ language

Veena D. Dwivedi is Director – Centre for Neuroscience; Professor – Psychology | Neuroscience, Brock University

“The goal of my research program is to understand how the human mind/brain effortlessly understands language. I propose a “heuristic first, algorithmic second” model of language processing. This model integrates the latest findings from neuroscience, psychology and linguistic theory.”
For more information about my research program, visit the Dwivedi Brain and Language Lab website:
https://brocku.ca/dwivedi-brain-and-language-lab/

AI could be the breakthrough that allows humanoid robots to jump from science fiction to reality

Dr. Daniel Zhou Hao is a Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in AI and Robotics, School of Computing and Mathematical Sciences, University of Leicester. He is the founder of the Dynamics and Neural Intelligence (DANi) Lab and the Team Lead of the DriverLeics research-inspired education group in AI-powered robotics and autonomous systems.
Dr. Hao is the Leicester’s PI in the UK Space Agency (UKSA) funded PLATOR project. He is also the Robotics Lead for the ESA/NASA Mars Sample Return DWI Project (ESA Prog. ref: E/019A-02R – MSR SRP E3P2), affiliated with Space Park Leicester. Dr. Hao is the Co-I of the EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Digital Transformation of Metals Industry (2024), working with School of Engineering.
Dr. Hao’s expertise encompasses Spacecraft AOCS/GNC, Robotics, and AI. His current research interests include autonomous GNC supporting in-orbit servicing and manufacturing, Large language and vision models driven robotics, Reinforcement Learning for Legged Space Robots, AI-driven Robotic Manipulation, and AI for Space Sciences.

Contemplating Oblivion

Keith Wiley was one of the original members of MURG, the Mind Uploading Research Group, an online community dating to the mid-90s that discussed issues of consciousness with an aim toward mind uploading. He has written a previous book, ‘A Taxonomy and Metaphysics of Mind-Uploading’, about the philosophical interpretation of mind uploading, various invited book chapters, peer-reviewed journal articles, and magazine articles, in addition to several essays on a broad array of topics.

How to test if we’re living in a computer simulation

Dr Melvin M. Vopson is an Associate Professor of Physics at the University of Portsmouth. His previous appointments include two postdoctoral fellowships at the University of York, senior R&D scientist at Seagate Technology (a world leading high-tech company) and over six years as Higher Research Scientist at the National Physical Laboratory.
Melvin’s major scientific contributions are in the fields of solid state caloric effects, thin film growth technologies, multiferroic materials and their applications, optical techniques of characterisation of solids, development of novel metrologies and innovations based on ferroic materials, theoretical studies of non-equilibrium phenomena, fundamental physics, and information physics.
Melvin developed new optical techniques for the characterization of solids, novel metrologies for multiferroic materials, a non-equilibrium theory of polarization reversal in ferroelectrics, and novel technologies for digital memories, including the discovery of a 4-state anti-ferroelectric memory effect, the discovery of the multicaloric effect in multiferroic materials, the discovery of the mass-energy-information equivalence principle, or the 5th state of matter, and the discovery of the second law of infodynamics.

Cyborgs v ‘holdout humans’: what the world might be like if our species survives for a million years

Anders Sandberg is a James Martin Research Fellow, at the Future of Humanity Institute & Oxford Martin School, University of Oxford. His research centres on societal and ethical issues surrounding human enhancement and new technology, as well as estimating the capabilities and underlying science of future technologies. Topics of particular interest include enhancement of cognition, cognitive biases, technology-enabled collective intelligence, neuroethics and public policy. He has worked on this within the EU project ENHANCE, where he also was responsible for public outreach and online presence. Besides scientific publications in neuroscience, ethics, and future studies, he has also participated in the public debate about human enhancement internationally. Anders also held an AXA Research Fellowship and is now the senior researcher in the FHI-Amlin collaboration on systemic risk of risk modelling.

Can machines be self-aware? New research explains how this could happen

Michael Timothy Bennett is a PhD Student, School of Computing, Australian National University
“After obtaining a masters from London Business School, I worked for 7 years in the technology sector in the UK, Italy, US and India. After founding a successful machine learning consultancy in London, I returned home to Australia to undertake research focused on artificial intelligence, studying at the ANU.”

Futurists predict a point where humans and machines become one. But will we see it coming?

John Kendall Hawkins is a Philosopher at the University of New England.
“I am an American ex-pat poet and freelance journalist and lifelong student currently residing in Oceania. I’m a philosopher — panpsychism, so residing, when you think about it, everywhere.”
He is a former reporter for The New Bedford Standard-Times, and a former columnist for the Prague Post. His poetry has won multiple awards, including the Academy of Ameican Poets prize in 1984 and the Deakin Literary Award in 1998.

Sandy Boucher is a Lecturer in the Philosophy of Science at the University of New England, NSW Australia.
“My research interests are mainly in the philosophy of biology (especially functions and teleology, the units of selection, species, natural kinds, macroevolution and paleobiology) and general philosophy of science (especially the scientific realism debate), but I also work on issues in metaphilosophy and epistemology. Current research projects include work on pragmatism in the scientific realism debate; arguments for realism about the units of selection; the role of values in science; and naturalised metaphysics.”