Artificial intelligence is becoming more intelligent by the day. Will robotic intelligence someday match or surpass human intelligence? What is the line between robot and human, and what does artificial intelligence mean for humanity?

 

University students analyzed some of the most pressing scientific and technological questions of our day. Drawing from Aristotle, Descartes, and current debates in the philosophy of mind, we explored what it means to be human, the nature of intelligence and consciousness, the concept of God, and the metaphysical possibilities of strong artificial intelligence.

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Topics discussed include:

• Are we in the matrix? The problem of perception

• Is the mind the brain? Materialism and Dualism

• Could there be zombies? Qualia and Consciousness

• Could Robots Think Like Us? Thought and Intentionality

• It's alive! (Or is it?) Personal identity, formal and final causality, hylomorphism

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Instructor

Molly Oshatz, Ph.D. is the First Principles Program Director and Senior Fellow at the Zephyr Institute. She holds a Ph.D. in Intellectual History from UC Berkeley, and has served as Assistant Professor of History at San Francisco State University and Florida State University.