Month: November 2021

Last time, we talked about emotions being intrinsic to sufficiently advanced AI. A closely related subject is whether a mind needs a body to be “complex enough,” including what you would call a body (which may not be at all the same as ours). Let’s backtrack a little. The brain developed in animals and not in plants because animals must execute complex movement in complex environments. The brain is a prediction engine, attempting to predict the outcome of movement and adjust itself based on the results, via the feedback loop. The butterfly effect, present in sufficiently complex environments, makes exact…

It has been a staple of common wisdom that artificial intelligence (AI) is to be something like Data, an android from Star Trek–rational and largely incapable of emotion, even questioning the emotions’ utility. Vulcan, also of Star Trek, is a non-AI example of this kind of rationalism. In general, the idea that reason is superior to emotion has been our legacy since the Age of Reason. Star Trek is not the only example of that in fiction, either. Science fiction abounds with examples of super-rational AIs, which are “programmed” to do this or that, and the like. If they are…