In these five chapters we introduce, with significant details, the core fundamental notions of (1) deformability, (2) sound and hearing, (3) permeability and porosity, (4) viscosity, (5) immiscibility, (6) wettability, (7) gravity and geodesy, and (8) heat and thermodynamics. We then illustrate, with applications across disciplines, the importance of these notions in our lives and in understanding the world around us. These applications include the description of skyquakes and limnic eruptions, the origin of hydrocarbon accumulations underground, the description of the (...) interiors of our Moon and of Jupiter's core, the differences between near- and far-side of our Moon, vortices in oceans, gravity anomalies of Antarctica and Mars, lateral and vertical plate motions, the absence of induced earthquakes in the Bakken shale play, self-cleaning surfaces including oil spills, human thermoregulation, thermal diagnostics and therapies, bone and muscles losses during space travels, and nuclear fusion by gravitational confinement. (shrink)

Risk prediction in emergency medicine (EM) holds unique challenges due to issues surrounding urgency, blurry research-practise distinctions, and the high-pressure environment in emergency departments (ED). Artificial intelligence (AI) risk prediction tools have been developed with the aim of streamlining triaging processes and mitigating perennial issues affecting EDs globally, such as overcrowding and delays. The implementation of these tools is complicated by the potential risks associated with over-triage and under-triage, untraceable false positives, as well as the potential for the biases of (...) healthcare professionals toward technology leading to the incorrect usage of such tools. This paper explores risk surrounding these issues in an analysis of a case study involving a machine learning triage tool called the Score for Emergency Risk Prediction (SERP) in Singapore. This tool is used for estimating mortality risk in presentation at the ED. After two successful retrospective studies demonstrating SERP’s strong predictive accuracy, researchers decided that the pre-implementation randomised controlled trial (RCT) would not be feasible due to how the tool interacts with clinical judgement, complicating the blinded arm of the trial. This led them to consider other methods of testing SERP’s real-world capabilities, such as ongoing-evaluation type studies. We discuss the outcomes of a risk–benefit analysis to argue that the proposed implementation strategy is ethically appropriate and aligns with improvement-focused and systemic approaches to implementation, especially the learning health systems framework (LHS) to ensure safety, efficacy, and ongoing learning. (shrink)

Since around 2012, there has been a ‘deep learning revolution’ in artificial intelligence (AI) that has brought AI to the forefront of many sectors of human activity. As new AI technology has sprea...

The age of artificial intelligence (AI) is upon us, and its effect upon society in the coming years will be noteworthy. Artificial intelligence is a field that encompasses such applications as robotics, expert systems, natural language understanding, speech recognition, and computer vision. The effect of these AI systems upon existing and future job occupations will be important. This paper takes a look at artificial intelligence in terms of the creation of new job categories. Also, the introduction of AI into the (...) organization to better familiarize the employees about AI will be discussed. (shrink)

The input to phonological reasoning are alternations, that is, variations in the pronunciation of related words, such as in electri[k] ‐ electri[s]‐ity. But phonologists cannot agree what counts as a relevant alternation: the issue is highly contentious despite a research record of over 50 years. We believe that the experimental setup presented may contribute to this debate based on a kind of evidence that was not brought to bear to date. Our experiment was thus designed to distinguish between alternations where (...) phonological computation plays no role, and those where it has contributed to language production. The design manipulates two factors that to date have not been considered in experimental studies of language production: linguistic complexity and alternation specificity. The former is understood as extra processing demands issued by two types of linguistic activity, morphosyntactic and phonological. Our results show that reaction time latencies are longer when participants are burdened with both morphosyntactic and phonological tasks than when they carry out just a morphosyntactic task, and they are still shorter in absence of both types of demands. These results allowed us to address alternation specificity, that is, the fact that different alternations (within a language or across languages) may be driven by different production routines (an idea that is consensual among linguists but underdeveloped in the psycholinguistic literature). Our study shows that four different alternations in French produce alternation‐specific signatures in reaction time latencies. These findings may thus redound to the advantage of psycholinguistic studies by identifying two new factors, as well as produce results that speak to the linguistic quarrels. (shrink)

This article examines the role of the Spanish Atomic Forum as the representative of the nuclear sector in the public arena during the golden years of the nuclear power industry from the 1960s to 1970s. It focuses on the public image concerns of the Spanish nuclear lobby and the subsequent information campaigns launched during the late 1970s to counteract demonstrations by the growing and heterogeneous anti-nuclear movement. The role of advocacy of nuclear energy by the (...) Atomic Forum was similar to that in other countries, but the situation in Spain had some distinguishing features. Anti-nuclear protest in Spain peaked in 1978 paralleling the debates of a new National Energy Plan in Congress, whose first draft had envisaged a massive nuclearization of the country. We show how the approval of the Plan in July 1979, with a significant reduction in the nuclear energy component, was influenced by the anti-nuclear protest movements in Spain. Despite the efforts of the Spanish Atomic Forum to counter its message, the anti-nuclear movement was strengthened by reactions to the Three Mile Island accident in March 1979. (shrink)

A number of recent papers have described the successful derivation of egg and sperm precursor cells from mouse embryonic stem cells—so-called “artificial” gametes. Although many scientific questions remain, this research suggests numerous new possibilities for stem cell research and assisted reproductive technology, if a similar breakthrough is achieved with human embryonic stem cells. The novel opportunities raised by artificial gametes also prompt new ethical questions, such as whether same-sex couples should be able to access this technology to have children who (...) are genetically related to them both.THE CREATION OF “ARTIFICIAL” GAMETESOver the past two years, a number of papers have been published detailing the first successful attempts at differentiating mouse embryonic stem cells into egg1 and sperm2 precursor cells. Previously, researchers had used embryonic stem cells to generate tissues such as brain, liver, and pancreatic cells, but not germ cells of any kind. Production of gamete precursor cells was achieved initially through allowing stem cell lines to differentiate more or less randomly, but recent research has focused on identifying the precise ways in which differentiation into gametes can be precipitated and controlled. These breakthroughs make it seem likely that ongoing research on human stem cells will yield similar possibilities,3 raising questions over the practicalities of what might be achieved with such “artificial” gametes. In turn, the novel opportunities presented by artificial gametes raise a number of ethical concerns.The initial breakthrough, namely the obtaining of egg cells from mouse stem cells, was achieved by means of relatively simple science. Rather than coaxing stem cells to develop into eggs using complicated cocktails of growth factors, researchers adopted standard cell culture conditions, but grew the cells at higher density than usual.3–6 Growing the cells in this way led to the formation of ovary-like cell aggregates, which (when separated and stimulated with …. (shrink)

Conversational artificial intelligence (CAI) presents many opportunities in the psychotherapeutic landscape—such as therapeutic support for people with mental health problems and without access to care. The adoption of CAI poses many risks that need in-depth ethical scrutiny. The objective of this paper is to complement current research on the ethics of AI for mental health by proposing a holistic, ethical, and epistemic analysis of CAI adoption. First, we focus on the question of whether CAI is rather a tool or an (...) agent. This question serves as a framework for the subsequent ethical analysis of CAI focusing on topics of (self-) knowledge, (self-)understanding, and relationships. Second, we propose further conceptual and ethical analysis regarding human-AI interaction and argue that CAI cannot be considered as an equal partner in a conversation as is the case with a human therapist. Instead, CAI’s role in a conversation should be restricted to specific functions. (shrink)

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed joint post-proceedings of three international workshops organized by the Japanese Society for Artificial Intelligence, held in Tokyo, Japan in June 2006 during the 20th Annual Conference JSAI 2006. The volume starts with eight award winning papers of the JSAI 2006 main conference that are presented along with the 21 revised full workshop papers, carefully reviewed and selected for inclusion in the volume.

Life was difficult in the prehistoric time. Humans depended on the precarious fortunes of Hunting for the survival. This mode of living does not lead to the formation of civilization but it is a means to get there. Then man discovered the art of agriculture, where there is a continued supply of food. With this security of the future, man began to expand his mind and began to embellish his life. Then came the discovery of electricity which has spawned a (...) new revolution in the mode of work similar to agricultural revolution which is the Industrial revolution. The machines began taking the hard labor on the behalf of the man. With this, came the abundance of goods and products. Though industrial revolution increased the goods, it decreased the employment opportunity for many. The labor of the man is not needed anymore where it was needed earlier as machines occupied its place. There is a similar revolution inevitable in the future which may further displace humans from the workforce. It is the Automation era. With automation comes abundance in the order which is not known earlier. The cost of the goods will decrease dramatically. There will be surplus of the goods. But what about the humans and their employment. Will they have a purpose or place in the workforce. This report deals with such practical, scientific and ethical question that needs to be addressed in the automation era. (shrink)

In their paper, “Conversational Artificial Intelligence in Psychotherapy: A New Therapeutic Tool or Agent?” Sedlakova and Trachsel (2023) claim that therapeutic insights and therapeutic changes are...

Although there have been efforts to integrate Semantic Web technologies and artificial agents related AI research approaches, they remain relatively isolated from each other. Herein, we introduce a new ontology framework designed to support the knowledge representation of artificial agents’ actions within the context of the actions of other autonomous agents and inspired by standard cognitive architectures. The framework consists of four parts: 1) an event ontology for information pertaining to actions and events; 2) an epistemic ontology containing facts about (...) knowledge, beliefs, perceptions and communication; 3) an ontology concerning future intentions, desires, and aversions; and, finally, 4) a deontic ontology for modeling obligations and prohibitions which limit agents’ actions. The architecture of the ontology framework is inspired by deontic cognitive event calculus as well as epistemic and deontic logic. We also describe a case study in which the proposed DCEO ontology supports autonomous vehicle navigation. (shrink)

There are two likely paths for philosophers to follow in their encounters with Artificial Life: they can see it as a new way of doing philosophy, or simply as a new object worthy of philosophical attention using traditional methods. Is Artificial Life best seen as a new philosophical method or a new phenomenon? There is a case to be made for each alternative, but I urge philosophers to take the leap and consider the first to be the more important and (...) promising. (shrink)

How has multiplicity superseded impossibility in philosophical challenges to artificial consciousness? I assess a trajectory in recent debates on artificial consciousness, in which metaphysical and explanatory challenges to the possibility of building conscious machines lead to epistemological concerns about the multiplicity underlying ‘what it is like’ to be a conscious creature or be in a conscious state. First, I analyse earlier challenges which claim that phenomenal consciousness cannot arise, or cannot be built, in machines. These are based on Block’s Chinese (...) Nation and Chalmers’ Hard Problem. To defuse such challenges, theorists of artificial consciousness can appeal to empirical methods and models of explanation. Second, I explain why this naturalistic approach produces an epistemological puzzle on the role of biological properties in phenomenal consciousness. Neither behavioural tests nor theoretical inferences seem to settle whether our machines are conscious. Third, I evaluate whether the new challenge can be managed through a more fine-grained taxonomy of conscious states. This strategy is supported by the development of similar taxonomies for biological species and animal consciousness. Although it makes sense of some current models of artificial consciousness, it raises questions about their subjective and moral significance. (shrink)

The current techno-scientific revolution has transformed the concepts of person and human being. Techno-scientific developments raise questions about our very own humanity and bring again the Übermensch, about whom Nietzsche once spoke, for discussion. Technology has increased the desire to modify our human condition, aiming for the perfection of the physical, intellectual and psychological abilities. Different sciences and disciplines have had the necessity to adapt themselves to these techno-scientific transformations. Psychology has not been the exception and, because of that, a (...) new paradigm of approaching the human mind has been recently established. Concepts such as cybertherapy, virtual reality therapy to treat patients with phobias, and the use of Artificial Intelligence have revolutionized Psychology. Therefore, the purpose of the article is to establish whether the use of Artificial Intelligence in Psychotherapy actually contributes to the improvement of human beings by making possible progress within the field of Mental Health Care or, on the contrary, it poses a risk to humanity, which might face the possibility of replacing human therapists with intelligent machines. (shrink)

The concept of artificial intelligence is not new nor is the notion that it should be granted legal protections given its influence on human activity. What is new, on a relative scale, is the notion that artificial intelligence can possess citizenship—a concept reserved only for humans, as it presupposes the idea of possessing civil duties and protections. Where there are several decades’ worth of writing on the concept of the legal status of computational artificial artefacts in the USA and elsewhere, (...) it is surprising that law makers internationally have come to a standstill to protect our silicon brainchildren. In this essay, it will be assumed that future artificial entities, such as Sophia the Robot, will be granted citizenship on an international scale. With this assumption, an analysis of rights will be made with respect to the needs of a non-biological intelligence possessing legal and civic duties akin to those possessed by humanity today. This essay does not present a full set of rights for artificial intelligence—instead, it aims to provide international jurisprudence evidence aliunde ab extra de lege lata for any future measures made to protect non-biological intelligence. (shrink)

Before liberation, my publications on aesthetics and literary theory had a widespread evil influence upon young readers. Since liberation, I have regretted that. I have eagerly studied Marxism-Leninism, seeking first to establish and then to destroy, in the hope that one day I will have thoroughly cleansed the long-standing infections in my thought. By waiting "to establish" I am putting off the task of "destroying." However, if a thing is not established, it cannot really be destroyed, and if it is (...) not destroyed, it cannot be established; the tasks of establishing and destroying must proceed together. At the present time, in order to bring socialism to its highest point of development, the Party and the government are making even greater demands on the intellectuals, expecting them to carry out a thoroughgoing program of thought reform so as to tran-quilize the remnants of the rotten thinking of the capitalist class and to establish the Marxist-Leninist world outlook and scientific method, thus demonstrating its inherent strength through socialist reconstruction. All the intellectuals accept this summons eagerly. As far as I myself am concerned, the Party's concern and teaching during the past few years have already produced fundamental changes in me, and I am truly grateful for the new life that the Party has given me. I feel that in this great summons, whether it be to wash away the evil influences of the past or whether it be for the benefit of my future scientific work, it is my responsibility to take advantage of this opportunity to progressively and sincerely criticize my own reactionary, rotten thinking. This I understand clearly, but at the present level of my thinking, I still feel unequal to the task. Nevertheless, I am confident that what I cannot see myself my comrades can certainly point out for me. (shrink)

The General Data Protection Regulation is a European Union regulation that will replace the existing Data Protection Directive on 25 May 2018. The most significant change is a huge increase in the maximum fine that can be levied for breaches of the regulation. Yet fewer than half of UK companies are fully aware of GDPR—and a number of those who were preparing for it stopped doing so when the Brexit vote was announced. A last-minute rush to become compliant is therefore (...) expected, and numerous companies are starting to offer advice, checklists and consultancy on how to comply with GDPR. In such an environment, artificial intelligence technologies ought to be able to assist by providing best advice; asking all and only the relevant questions; monitoring activities; and carrying out assessments. The paper considers four areas of GDPR compliance where rule based technologies and/or machine learning techniques may be relevant: Following compliance checklists and codes of conduct; Supporting risk assessments; Complying with the new regulations regarding technologies that perform automatic profiling; Complying with the new regulations concerning recognising and reporting breaches of security. It concludes that AI technology can support each of these four areas. The requirements that GDPR state for explanation and justification of reasoning imply that rule-based approaches are likely to be more helpful than machine learning approaches. However, there may be good business reasons to take a different approach in some circumstances. (shrink)

Samuel Alexander was a central figure of the new wave of realism that swept across the English-speaking world in the early twentieth century. His Space, Time, and Deity (1920a, 1920b) was taken to be the official statement of realism as a metaphysical system. But many historians of philosophy are quick to point out the idealist streak in Alexander’s thought. After all, as a student he was trained at Oxford in the late 1870s and early 1880s as British Idealism was beginning (...) to flourish. This naturally had some effect on his philosophical outlook and it is said that his early work is overtly idealist. In this paper I examine his neglected and understudied reactions to British Idealism in the 1880s. I argue that Alexander was not an idealist during this period and should not be considered as part of the British Idealist tradition, philosophically speaking. (shrink)

The moral enhancement of human beings is a constant theme in the history of humanity. Today, faced with the threats of a new, globalised world, concern over this matter is more pressing. For this reason, the use of biotechnology to make human beings more moral has been considered. However, this approach is dangerous and very controversial. The purpose of this article is to argue that the use of another new technology, AI, would be preferable to achieve this goal. Whilst several (...) proposals have been made on how to use AI for moral enhancement, we present an alternative that we argue to be superior to other proposals that have been developed. (shrink)

In this article, we study the mural restoration work based on artificial intelligence-assisted multiscale trace generation. Firstly, we convert the fresco images to colour space to obtain the luminance and chromaticity component images; then we process each component image to enhance the edges of the exfoliated region using high and low hat operations; then we construct a multistructure morphological filter to smooth the noise of the image. Finally, the fused mask image is fused with the original mural to obtain the (...) final calibration result. The fresco is converted to HSV colour space, and chromaticity, saturation, and luminance features are introduced; then the confidence term and data term are used to determine the priority of shedding boundary points; then a new block matching criterion is defined, and the best matching block is obtained to replace the block to be repaired based on the structural similarity between the block to be repaired and the matching block by global search; finally, the restoration result is converted to RGB colour space to obtain the final restoration result. An improved generative adversarial network structure is proposed to address the shortcomings of the existing network structure in mural defect restoration, and the effectiveness of the improved modules of the network is verified. Compared with the existing mural restoration algorithms on the test data experimentally verified, the peak signal-to-noise ratio score is improved by 4% and the structural similarity score is improved by 2%. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that the development of an artificial womb is already well on its way. By putting together pieces of information arising from new scientific advances in different areas, (neo-natal care, gynecology, embryology, the human genome project and computer science), I delineate a distinctive picture, which clearly suggests that the artificial womb may become a reality sooner than we may think. Currently, there is a huge gap between the first stages of gestation (using in vitro fertilization) and (...) the 22nd week (inside the womb). At the present time this gap seems an insurmountable barrier for fully developing a fetus outside a natural womb – a notion better known as ectogenesis. The history of science however, suggests that impenetrable barriers are such only temporarily. It is just a matter of time (and due research) until someone – intentionally or by chance – accesses the right answer and finds a way to overcome existing obstacles. Despite misgivings that the case of the artificial womb presents too many barriers, it would be naïve to suppose things would happen any differently. I observe in this paper, that it is time to acknowledge the consequences of new developments in different areas of scientific research which are leading to the advent of an artificial womb; and I modestly suggest that we might initiate a discussion on this topic now, while we have still enough time to decide what we may want and why. (shrink)

Artificial life (ALife) is the attempt to create artificial instances of life in a variety of media, but primarily within the digital computer. As such, the field brings together computationally-minded biologists and biologically-minded computer scientists. I argue that this new field is filled with interesting philosophical issues. However, there is a dearth of philosophers actively conducting research in this area. I discuss two books on the new field: Margaret A. Boden's The philosophy of artificial life and Christopher G. Langton's Artificial (...) life: an overview. They cover three areas of philosophical interest: the definition of life, the relationship between life and mind, and the possibility of creating life within a computational environment. This discussion allows me to critique past work in the philosophy of ALife that tends to see the field as a proving ground for traditional arguments from the philosophy of artificial intelligence. Instead, I suggest, what is interesting about ALife is how it differs from artificial intelligence and that the most interesting philosophical issues in the area are those derived from biology, not psychology. I recommend that these two books taken together constitute an interesting introduction to ALife and the wealth of philosophical issues found therein. (shrink)

ABSTRACTWhile over the last few decades AI research has largely focused on building tools and applications, recent technological developments have prompted a resurgence of interest in building a genuinely intelligent artificial agent – one that has a mind in the same sense that humans and animals do. In this paper, I offer a theoretical and methodological framework for this project of investigating “artificial minded intelligence” that can help to unify existing approaches and provide new avenues for research. I first outline (...) three desiderata that a framework for AMI research should satisfy. In Section 1, I further motivate the desiderata as well as the need for a new framework. Section 2 develops a general methodological approach, the “generative methodology,” and Section 3 develops a version of this methodology, the “Competence Framework for AI research”. (shrink)

This essay challenges the analogy argument. The analogy argument aims to show that the international domain satisfies the conditions of a Hobbesian state of nature: There fails to be a super-sovereign to keep all in awe, and hence, like persons in the state of nature, sovereigns are in a war every sovereign against every sovereign. By turning to Hobbes’ account of authorization, however, we see that subjects are under no obligation to obey a sovereign’s commands when doing so would contradict (...) the very end that motivated the authorization of the sovereign in the first place. There is thus an important disanalogy between natural and artificial persons, and this accordingly produces different reactions to the state of nature. (shrink)

This article offers a new definition of culture which hinges on what we consider to be its most distinctive feature, namely its artificiality. Our definition enables us to resolve some of the main issues and controversies involved in the concept of culture and its course of development. We argue that the large human brain played a revolutionary role in inverting the course of natural adaptation of the human species. This dramatic turnabout allowed humans to set their own conditions of existence (...) in their created environment; and one which unlike nature they were able to shape and dominate. We demonstrate the crucial part of language not merely in communication but in forming a web of meaningful symbols which gave rise to the human spiritual or metaphysical world. We depict human society as an unparalleled elaborate web of relationships which gave hominids an advantage over other species from the very beginning. (shrink)

A member of the two federal advisory panels on artificial hearts reflects that the nuclear‐powered artificial heart, had it been developed, would have posed a physical threat to others. Today's artificial heart poses a different threat. Because of the high costs, many people may be deprived of access to other forms of medical care and other social goods.

The problem of the ontological limit of Artificial Intelligence and transhumanism in contrast with the ontology of Homo sapiens is discussed. Beyond the so-called exogenous or endogenous integration, the scenario of a technological singularity seems to materialize in entities that synthesize biology and technology, for example, by means of a download or transbiomorphosis that translates the neural networks of our mind into the memory of a computer. This is a hybridization that warns us about the advent of new species that (...) could leave Homo sapiens behind. If the human/machine synthesis is the limit desired by the transhumanist program, this limit seems to have crossed, in turn, the very ontological limit of the human, on which science, philosophy and religion had so far more or less agreed –each presenting their own cards. (shrink)

In the mid‐twentieth century, theorists began seriously forecasting possibilities for artificial intelligence (AI). As related research gathered momentum and resources, the topic made impressions on public discourse. One effect was increasingly pointed emphasis on AI in popular narratives. Although considerably earlier thematic examples may be located, we can observe swelling and generally pessimistic threads of speculation in science fiction of the 1950s and 1960s. This discussion identifies some pertinent science fiction texts from that period, alongside public discussion arising from contemporary (...) research. One consistent theme is human receptiveness to the numinous , and the capacity to ascribe personality and even divinity to sufficiently impressive manifestations, even artificial ones. Science fiction has long contemplated such reactions, prefiguring today's anticipations of AIs that might abruptly develop themselves beyond any possible human comprehension or control. This body of exploratory projections is a useful resource for the engineers and philosophers currently grappling with realistic prospects for Western humanity's shifting conception of itself. (shrink)

While feminist critiques of AI are increasingly common in the scholarly literature, they are by no means new. Alison Adam’s Artificial Knowing (1998) brought a feminist social and epistemological stance to the analysis of AI, critiquing the symbolic AI systems of her day and proposing constructive alternatives. In this paper, we seek to revisit and renew Adam’s arguments and methodology, exploring their resonances with current feminist concerns and their relevance to contemporary machine learning. Like Adam, we ask how new AI (...) methods could be adapted for feminist purposes and what role new technologies might play in addressing concerns raised by feminist epistemologists and theorists about algorithmic systems. In particular, we highlight distributed and federated learning as providing partial solutions to the power-oriented concerns that have stymied efforts to make machine learning systems more representative and pluralist. (shrink)

Today, humanity is trying to turn the artificial intelligence that it produces into natural intelligence. Although this effort is technologically exciting, it often raises ethical concerns. Therefore, the intellectual ability of artificial intelligence will always bring new questions. Although there have been significant developments in the consciousness of artificial intelligence, the issue of consciousness must be fully explained in order to complete this development. When consciousness is fully understood by human beings, the subject of “free will” will be explained. Therefore, (...) human consciousness should be re-examined and perceptions that we are not aware of from a philosophical point of view should be examined. The relevance of the perceptions we do not realize to the unconscious, and finally the impact on consciousness goes back to the sources of philosophy. Hegel, in particular, we may find information about these perceptions unusual. Consciousness cannot be separated from the unconscious. Consciousness should be rethought in the context of memory models and unconscious in this sense. Seeing how Hegel's human cognition acts, especially in Hegel's perception, raises the unconscious question again. If we expect something different from an artificial intelligence, we need to rethink the artificial cognitive model. This paper argues that without the unconscious component of artificial intelligence, it cannot approach human cognition. -/- Key Words: Artificial Intelligence, Creativity, Memory, perception . (shrink)

Biological reproduction is a material process of intertwined, recursive propagule generation and development, assuming that development produces simple life cycles. Most organisms, however, have more or less complex life cycles. Here, I attempt to reconcile recent articulations of a reproducer account with traditional approaches to complex life cycles by generalizing genetic demarcation criteria for life cycle generations in terms of the “scaffolded” development of hybrid reproducers. I argue that scaffolding provides a general method for identifying developmental bottlenecks and suggests in (...) turn a new way of understanding developmental reaction norms. (shrink)

Each technology advances at its own pace, often indifferent to theoretical and philosophical-scientific conceptualizations. In the case of technologies like artificial intelligence (AI), and especially generative AI (GenAI), developments are so rapid that conceptual and epistemological reflections struggle to keep up, even at the level of basic definitions. Yet these definitions carry significant non-theoretical implications, including social, legal, and policy-related consequences. In this paper, I offer some reflections on the definition of GenAI proposed by Ronge et al. (2025), using it (...) as an opportunity to highlight the most relevant aspects of the ongoing debate sparked by these new AI systems. In doing so, we will seek to explore the implications of generative AI systems in the context of human interaction, particularly in light of their role as active supports rather than passive tools. This shift, coupled with the increasingly anthropomorphic perception of their capabilities, sets GenAI systems apart from any previous technologies, not only in terms of technical features but also in how they are perceived by everyday users. (shrink)

Higher education has expanded at astonishing rates around the world. We seek to understand the oppositions that periodically arise, which may produce enrollment declines and/or imposition of political controls. The post-1945 growth of higher education was – to a greater extent than is often recognized – propelled by the liberal, and later neoliberal, international order. Oppositions arise from illiberal alternatives, which also may organize globally. The recent weakening of the global liberal order, associated with growing populism and nationalism, creates conditions (...) for a new wave of oppositions. We hypothesize that attacks on higher education emerge in countries less integrated into world society and in countries linked to international structures that support illiberal alternatives. We examine cross-national data on higher education over the period 1960–2017. Enrollments and funding are higher in societies more tightly linked to world society and lower in countries tied to illiberal international organizations. Analyses of enrollments in various fields, constraints on academic freedom, and terrorist attacks on education institutions show similar pattern. Finally, we observe heterogeneity in the forms of illiberal opposition: countries that suppress academic freedom generally are less likely to restrict enrollments. (shrink)

_Purpose._ The study aims to understand artificial intelligence as a socio-cultural phenomenon and its impact on education, where the spiritual sphere of humanity, moral norms, values, and human cognitive abilities are preserved, transferred as well as reproduced. A new discourse on the interaction of artificial and authentic human intelligence becomes inevitable, which has led to a situation of uncertainty. Changes in the socio-cultural environment under the influence of artificial intelligence increase potential threats to the educational space, which stimulates to find (...) the ways to eliminate them. _Theoretical basis._ Various approaches of classical and postmodern philosophical heritage were taken as a theoretical basis for the research. _The originality_ of the study is in the interpretation of artificial intelligence as a modern form of alienation of essential human characteristics in the socio-cultural context of information technology. The expansion of artificial intelligence raises awareness of the existential threat to the basic socio-cultural, moral and ethical principles of humanism. It is proved that various forms of alienation in the current existing socio-cultural space are typical of our reality, which changes the system of values, moral principles, and social organization of the community. _Conclusions._ In conclusion, it is proved that AI is a natural stage of scientific and technological progress, which reflects its secondary, derivative nature from human (authentic) intelligence. Human intelligence will always have advantages over AI due to its ability to create, communicate socially and culturally, and be emotional. The dilemma of the counterbalance between human and artificial intelligence is perceived mainly at the emotional level of people. The millennial understanding of the primacy of the creator over his creation can traditionally overcome this contradiction. The universality of human thinking is an undeniable advantage of human intelligence and a guarantee of its, i.e. our, priority. (shrink)

Artificial insemination using the husband's semen (AIH) has always seemed more acceptable than the same procedure using donor semen. However, the layman may not even have thought of the legal problems or the moral dilemma if in fact a woman is inseminated using her husband's frozen semen after his death. In the USA there are already sperm banks set up by private individuals, generally for the use of those marriage partners when the husband has had a vasectomy and afterwards a (...) child is desired. If such private sperm banks were set up in Britain complex legal problems would follow, quite apart from the moral issue as to whether it was desirable to bring a child into the world deliberately having deprived him of a father from the start. These are the issues which Mr Cusine thinks should be carefully considered before doctors, lawyers and the women potentially concerned are confronted with a new dilemma. (shrink)

Transport through the nuclear pore complex (NPC), a keystone of the eukaryotic building plan, is known to involve a large channel and an abundance of phenylalanine–glycine (FG) protein domains serving as binding sites for soluble nuclear transport receptors and their cargo complexes. However, the conformation of the FG domains in vivo, their arrangement in relation to the transport channel and their function(s) in transport are still vividly debated. Here, we revisit a number of representative transport models—specifically Brownian affinity (...) gating, selective phase gating, reversible FG domain collapse, and reduction of dimensionality (ROD)—in the light of new data obtained by optical single transporter recording, optical superresolution microscopy, artificial nanopores, and many other techniques. The analysis suggests that a properly adapted, simplified version of the ROD model accounts well for the available data. This has implications for nucleocytoplasmic transport in general. (shrink)

Not every new technology or public media hype warrants the attention of philosophers and theorists of education. In recent years, we have witnessed many educational trends and technologies that hav...

Computer assisted theorem proving is an increasingly important part of mathematical methodology, as well as a long-standing topic in artificial intelligence (AI) research. However, the current generation of theorem proving software have limited functioning in terms of providing new proofs. Importantly, they are not able to discriminate interesting theorems and proofs from trivial ones. In order for computers to develop further in theorem proving, there would need to be a radical change in how the software functions. Recently, machine learning results (...) in solving mathematical tasks have shown early promise that deep artificial neural networks could learn symbolic mathematical processing. In this paper, I analyze the theoretical prospects of such neural networks in proving mathematical theorems. In particular, I focus on the question how such AI systems could be incorporated in practice to theorem proving and what consequences that could have. In the most optimistic scenario, this includes the possibility of autonomous automated theorem provers (AATP). Here I discuss whether such AI systems could, or should, become accepted as active agents in mathematical communities. (shrink)

The experience of organizing the educational process during the quarantine caused by the COVID-19 pandemic is considered. Using of interactive technologies that allow organizing instant audio communication with a remote audience, as well as intelligent tools based on artificial intelligence that can help educational institutions to work more efficiently. Examples of sufficient use of artificial intelligence in distance learning are given. Particular attention is paid to the development of intelligent chatbots intended for use in communications with students of online courses (...) of educational web portals. The use of technologies of ontology formation based on automatic extraction of concepts from external sources is offered, what can lead to greater acceleration of construction of the intellectual component of chatbots. Artificial intelligence tools can become an essential part of distance learning during this global COVID-19 pandemic. While educational institutions are closed to quarantine and many of them transitioned to distance learning lecturers and schoolteachers, as well as students and schoolchildren faced with the necessity to study in this new reality. The impact of these changes depends on people's ability to learn and on the role that the education system will play in meeting the demand for quality and affordable training. The experience of organizing the educational process at the University of Education Management of the National Academy of Pedagogical Sciences of Ukraine in the quarantine caused by the COVID-19 pandemic showed that higher and postgraduate institutions were mostly ready to move to distance learning. However, most distance learning systems, on whatever platform they are organized, need to be supplemented: the ability to broadcast video, providing fast transmission of various types of information, receiving instant feedback when voting, polls and more. The structure of each section of the training course for the online learning system should fully cover the training material and meet all the objectives of the course. Appropriate language should be used, and wording, syntax, and presentation of tasks should be considered. One of the areas of application of artificial intelligence technologies in online learning is the use of chatbots which are characterrized by the following properties. It is advisable to use computer ontologies to ensure the intellectualization of chatbots. In this case, the metadata must be understandable to both humans and software and meet the requirements of modern standards in the field of information technology. The extraction of concepts from external data sources was carried out to build the ontology. (shrink)

Machine ethics and robot rights are quickly becoming hot topics in artificial intelligence and robotics communities. We will argue that attempts to attribute moral agency and assign rights to all intelligent machines are misguided, whether applied to infrahuman or superhuman AIs, as are proposals to limit the negative effects of AIs by constraining their behavior. As an alternative, we propose a new science of safety engineering for intelligent artificial agents based on maximizing for what humans value. In particular, we challenge (...) the scientific community to develop intelligent systems that have human-friendly values that they provably retain, even under recursive self-improvement. (shrink)

Over the coming decades, Artificial Intelligence will profoundly impact the way we live, work, wage war, play, seek a mate, educate our young, and care for our elderly. It is likely to greatly increase our aggregate wealth, but it will also upend our labor markets, reshuffle our social order, and strain our private and public institutions. Eventually it may alter how we see our place in the universe, as machines pursue goals independent of their creators and outperform us in domains (...) previously believed to be the sole dominion of humans. Whether we regard them as conscious or unwitting, revere them as a new form of life or dismiss them as mere clever appliances, is beside the point. They are likely to play an increasingly critical and intimate role in many aspects of our lives. The emergence of systems capable of independent reasoning and action raises serious questions about just whose interests they are permitted to serve, and what limits our society should place on their creation and use. Deep ethical questions that have bedeviled philosophers for ages will suddenly arrive on the steps of our courthouses. Can a machine be held accountable for its actions? Should intelligent systems enjoy independent rights and responsibilities, or are they simple property? Who should be held responsible when a self-driving car kills a pedestrian? Can your personal robot hold your place in line, or be compelled to testify against you? If it turns out to be possible to upload your mind into a machine, is that still you? The answers may surprise you. (shrink)

Some authors have recently suggested that it is time to consider rights for robots. These suggestions are based on the claim that the question of robot rights should not depend on a standard set of conditions for ‘moral status’; but instead, the question is to be framed in a new way, by rejecting the is/ought distinction, making a relational turn, or assuming a methodological behaviourism. We try to clarify these suggestions and to show their highly problematic consequences. While we find (...) the suggestions ultimately unmotivated, the discussion shows that our epistemic condition with respect to the moral status of others does raise problems, and that the human tendency to empathise with things that do not have moral status should be taken seriously—we suggest that it produces a “derived moral status”. Finally, it turns out that there is typically no individual in real AI that could even be said to be the bearer of moral status. Overall, there is no reason to think that robot rights are an issue now. (shrink)

An important topic in the evolution of language is the kinds of grammars that can be computed by humans and other animals. Fitch and Hauser () approached this question by assessing the ability of different species to learn 2 grammars, (AB)n and An Bn. An Bn was taken to indicate a phrase structure grammar, eliciting a center‐embedded pattern. (AB)n indicates a grammar whose strings entail only local relations between the categories of constituents. F&H's data suggest that humans, but not tamarin (...) monkeys, learn an An Bn grammar, whereas both learn a simpler (AB)n grammar (). In their experiments, the A constituents were syllables pronounced by a female voice, whereas the B constituents were syllables pronounced by a male voice. This study proposes that what characterizes the An Bn exemplars is the distributional regularities of the syllables pronounced by either a male or a female rather than the underlying, more abstract patterns. This article replicates F&H's data and reports new controls using either categories similar to those in F&H or less salient ones. This article shows that distributional regularities explain the data better than grammar learning. Indeed, when familiarized with An Bn exemplars, participants failed to discriminate A3 B2 and A2 B3 from An Bn items, missing the crucial feature that the number of As must equal the number of Bs. Therefore, contrary to F&H, this study concludes that no syntactic rules implementing embedded nonadjacent dependencies were learned in these experiments. The difference between human linguistic abilities and the putative precursors in monkeys deserves further exploration. (shrink)

Given a steady increase of interest in 18th Scottish philosophy it isn't surprising that Mandeville is also enjoying a new wave of interest. On the one hand, Mandeville had an especially obvious influence on Scottish Enlightenment thought. As the contributions in this volume demonstrate, the Scots took Mandeville very seriously, more so than any other collective audience at the time. In The Fable, the Scots saw fundamental challenges, not mere rabble-rousing social commentary. On the other hand, an essential aspect of (...) Mandeville’s work is a competing moral psychology as well as a similarly tightly conjoined and competing social-political theory–one with much more radical implications than most Scots were prepared to endorse. (shrink)

This article conducts a literature review of current and future challenges in the use of artificial intelligence in cyber physical systems. The literature review is focused on identifying a conceptual framework for increasing resilience with AI through automation supporting both, a technical and human level. The methodology applied resembled a literature review and taxonomic analysis of complex internet of things interconnected and coupled cyber physical systems. There is an increased attention on propositions on models, infrastructures and frameworks of IoT in (...) both academic and technical papers. These reports and publications frequently represent a juxtaposition of other related systems and technologies. We review academic and industry papers published between 2010 and 2020. The results determine a new hierarchical cascading conceptual framework for analysing the evolution of AI decision-making in cyber physical systems. We argue that such evolution is inevitable and autonomous because of the increased integration of connected devices in cyber physical systems. To support this argument, taxonomic methodology is adapted and applied for transparency and justifications of concepts selection decisions through building summary maps that are applied for designing the hierarchical cascading conceptual framework. (shrink)

We study a new variant of the dissipative particle dynamics (DPD) model that includes the possibility of dynamically forming and breaking strong bonds. The emergent reaction kinetics may then interact with self-assembly processes. We observe that self-assembled amphiphilic aggregations such as micelles have a catalytic effect on chemical reaction networks, changing both equilibrium concentrations and reaction frequencies. These simulation results are in accordance with experimental results on the so-called “concentration effect”.

With the expansion of artificial intelligence and advanced technologies, theworld in the 21st century is rapidly changing and imposing new living dynamics. Althoughsuch changes affect all age groups, younger generations accept them faster andreact more positively. The new cohorts - Generation Z and Alpha - live in a digital worldthat affect their lifestyle, interpersonal relations, quality of mental health, psychologicalwell-being and everyday challenges. The presence of the so called “Frankenstein effect”in some adults provoked by the fast development of artificial intelligence (...) and robotics,reflects a “humans versus machines” position, viewing artificial intelligence as athreat to humanity. However, the reality is that digital and human world are not inconflict, since many people are already using artificial intelligence tools on daily basis.It is implemented in certain aspects of medicine, education, business, law, agriculture,industry, space technology and in many other fields. With this in mind, the aspect ofmorality pops up as a very important one. A frequently asked question is: Does artificialintelligence have the capacity to make moral decisions independently? Therefore, integratingmorality into AI algorithms is one of the priorities that interdisciplinary teamsfrom engineering and computer sciences, psychology, philosophy, sociology, law, etc.are intensively working on. This paper addresses this issue by presenting findings fromrelevant research which discusses the challenges and possibilities for integrating thedimensions of morality and introducing human values into autonomous systems thatperform complex tasks. (shrink)