Knowledge and AI

These are exciting times. Every week or so, you hear about a new major feat of an AI that achieved something that we previously considered impossible. Not only can machines spot patterns at amazing rates, they can also output things that surprise us and, in some case, even learn new things. Machine learning is truly fascinating and it pushes the boundaries of how we understand concepts such knowledge. Admittedly, as human beings we are generally better than machines at the use of creative imagination and the skills to deal with the unexpected. Unlike machines, humans are also pretty good at generalising and recognising something we have never seen before.

However, recent technological developments show that new progress in machine learning is possible, even in this area. At MIT, researchers merged symbolic and statistical AI to teach machines to reason about what they see. In fact, we have seen AI create original art, beat humans at a chess game, deliver a medical diagnosis and discover the proof for mathematical theorems. Modern machines can also learn things with minimal human input. So what does all this imply? What does this mean for knowledge? Should we redefine our "human" concept of knowledge? Can a machine ever "know" something? Or can it merely create knowledge? How important is the human belief in knowledge for it to be considered knowledge?

Can Robots be Creative? https://youtu.be/Rh9vBczqMk0

We talked to Sophia: https://youtu.be/78-1MlkxyqI

Technology plays an important role within the dissemination of knowledge. In addition, recent technological developments have enabled us to create knowledge that we would not have been able to create without it. Technology can also help us reach evidence that would have been unobtainable without it. Although technology and computer programs are initially created by humans, some machines have actually managed to create new knowledge without human intervention.

Artificial Intelligence is becoming more and more impressive each day. This leads us to discuss whether human beings are needed to create new knowledge, whether machines can learn, or think autonomously. We may even question whether machines can "know" and whether a "knower" is necessarily human.

Scope

• How has technology impacted collective memory and how knowledge is preserved?

• What is the difference between data, information and knowledge?

• To what extent is the internet changing what it means to know something?

• In what sense, if any, can a machine be said to know something?

• Does technology allow knowledge to reside outside of human knowers?

• Does knowledge just allow us to arrange existing knowledge in different ways, or is this arrangement itself knowledge in some sense?Ethics

• How might technology exacerbate or mitigate unequal access, and divides in our access, to knowledge?

• Does the existence of the deep web influence our view on whether some knowledge should remain secret or largely inaccessible?

• Should we hold people responsible for the applications of technologies they develop/ create?

• Are there situations where ignorance/ lack of knowledge is an excuse for unethical behaviour?

• On what criteria could we decide whether “hacktivism” is morally justifiable?

Methods and Tools

• How does technology extend or transform different modes of human cognition and communication?

• To what extent are technologies such as the microscope and telescope merely extensions to the human senses or do they introduce radically new ways of seeing the world?

• Is artificial intelligence restricted to information or can it also allow machines to acquire knowledge?

• How does computation help people to process data and information to gain knowledge?

• How has increased access to images and other multimedia sources impacted what we know and how we know?

• What is the difference between computational thinking, algorithmic thinking and critical thinking?

• How does the medium used change the way that knowledge is produced, shared or understood?

Perspectives​

• How are online or virtual communities similar to/different from “traditional” communities of knowers?

• Do social networks create “echo chambers” that reinforce our existing perspective as a knower rather than boost our engagement with diverse perspectives?

• What impact has the fact that English is the primary language of the internet had on knowledge sharing?

• How has technology impacted how we filter data and information?

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