Joscha Bach - Philosophy of AI - Winter Intelligence/AGI12 Oxford University

"I see the AGI conference as an attempt.. to get back to the original idea of artificial intelligence - to see computational systems as an avenue to developing an understanding of how the mind works. I think this is at its heart a philosophical issue, a philosophical enterprise... but the methods that we need are some that we do not find in contemporary philosophy - so my idea is not to build applications or to develop formalisms that can be used to build applications, but it's about maybe a subset of analytical philosophy; it's in a way 'computational philosophy' where analytical philosophy allows you to express anything that can be, or use anything that can be expressed in a formal language in principle - I want to narrow this even further down. There are things that can be expressed in a computational system that are computable; that can run. This means you do exclude paradoxes which excludes not only those things that you cannot specify, but also excludes things you can specify but are paradoxes which could run - so eventually the proof that you have understood something from the point of view of a computer scientist is that it works. And I do think that you need such an approach as it has pervaded most of physics for instance already - you need such an approach in philosophy of mind too."

Joscha Bach, Ph.D. is an AI researcher who worked and published about cognitive architectures, mental representation, emotion, social modeling, and multi-agent systems. He earned his Ph.D. in cognitive science from the University of Osnabrück, Germany, and has built computational models of motivated decision making, perception, categorization, and concept-formation. He is especially interested in the philosophy of AI and in the augmentation of the human mind.

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Kind regards,
Adam Ford
- Science, Technology & the Future

[ReflectiveJourney]

The consistency of ideas. He has been working out .. honing these ideas for more than 15 years imo.. it's like an art piece ... Everything hangs together so beautifully. Most optimal encoding = most true = most beautiful.

[scfu]

I wish we had more time to do the interview. I hope that I get the chance to do further interviews with Josha Bach.

[jose]

This is a very inspiring and futuristic field. It would help a lot of social, personal and educational problems as well as treatment fields for cognitive sciences. Go for it Joscha.

[artemioyuddor]

I find it great that there are videos like this. Thanks to Adam and to Joscha Bach. Please try to get a Part II of this video with a wider spectrum of questions. This inspires people who want to be part in the formation of AI.

[scfu]

Joscha was great, during the FHI Winter Intelligence conference he often had some great comments during some of the sessions.

[lomps]

These are really insightful ideas. The objectivity brought to bear on issues through this kind of computer speak generates very novel concepts that could be useful....the downside is the absolutism and the reductionist conclusions generated by those same mechanistic models.

[DaMonstro]

Indeed thanks, that was a great interview

[megavide]

It's funny how Joscha looks similar to Gary Numan!
I always have to think of the Numan song "Down in the Park", when people talk about the future of AI/ AGI! o_O ! ;)

[Stadtpark]

They just confirmed we are on track for five degree global warming, and he knew it seven years ago.
When you watch the beginning of the new film on Michael Moore’s channel, you can see that scientists already knew about human made global warming in the 1950’s! It’s already on film back then!

[yilu]

The details says the name is "Joscha Bach, Ph.D.", but in the title, is reads "Josha Bach". So there must be a typo.

[kirstinstrand]

Too many people live for the Future; therefore, if the future includes death, they will deny that the Future will not come into being. Now is where we exist, however, few understand the difference between the present and the future.
People are very confused about living.

[bidask]

AI vs. me. Today. I will win. AI vs. me in 20 years. I will win. See the problem? Why is it AI vs. Me (in my mind) and not AI stands with me for a common goal?

[markpx]

If you base your proof of concept on what works, you are simply recapitulating the more-than 100-year old philosophy of pragmatism.