Harry M. Collins
Monday 14 June, 2021, at 16:30
Must Intelligent Machines Be Social Machines?
The aim of artificial intelligence that I am addressing is to reproduce human intelligence with artificial means. This aim is usually pursued by trying to build isolated brain-like machines. But intelligent humans are not isolates. Human babies who survive in spite of isolation from other humans are not intelligent in human-like ways, for instance, they have no natural language. Humans are fundamentally social so an intelligent machine will have to be social in the way that humans are social. Deep learning takes a first but impressive step in this direction but before the best of these machines can mimic human intelligence it will have to be immersed in social groups in the same way as growing children are immersed.
Short bio
Harry Collins is Distinguished Research Professor at Cardiff University. He is an elected Fellow of the British Academy and winner of the Bernal prize for social studies of science. His 25 books cover, among other things, sociology of scientific knowledge, artificial intelligence, the nature of expertise, tacit knowledge, and technology in sport.