Here is Uncle Scott's most recent stuff...
Who We Were, and Who We Are,
and Who We Can Become
Millions of people around the world imagine a humanist future - an era when humanity achieves full maturity, eschewing inequality, racism, misogyny, and war, in favor of cooperation and empathy and justice for all.Is such a destiny possible? Some believe that our violent and selfish impulses are built into our genes, and will always be with us - that a humanist destiny is not only unlikely but impossible.The thesis of this book is that a humanist future is not only possible but inevitable, that we can know with confidence that we have the potential to overcome our current dysfunction, because we've already achieved it - in our distant past...
The Children of Babel: Essays on the Inherent Nature of Artificial Intelligence and Consciousness
Can machines be intelligent? Yes, that seems settled; but can machines be conscious? That's not nearly as clear. The dream of machines that not only think, but feel and experience consciousness as humans do has been a canvas of fantasists, a goal of technologists and a conundrum to philosophers for decades. Here in this brief collection are discussions covering a number of culturally prominent examples (such as HAL 9000), well-known intellectual arguments (the Chinese Room and Nagel's Bat), and famous expositions of the problem (the Tortoise and Achilles, from Hofstadter's Godel, Escher, Bach). The discussions are nested within the mathematical wonder of pi, and framed in Borges' fantastic Library of Babel - ensuring a reading experience that is as entertaining as it is thought-provoking.
HAL 9000: An Unauthorized Biography
The AIs and Androids of STAR TREK
The Progressive Beatles
AI in Sci-Fi: Fictional Artificial Minds and the Real World Awaiting Them
Star Trek's Cmdr. Data... Alien's Ash and Bishop... Skynet and the Terminator... the androids of Westworld... Ex Machina's Eva, the Stepford Wives - and the granddaddy of them all, HAL 9000... These and other famous artificial minds are at the heart of this exploration of AI and the possibility of machine consciousness, suggesting the directions that the evolution of the technology might take. How great is the gap between the AI of film and television and what's emerging in the world today? Will that gap be closed at some point? Will we ever see androids who think and feel and experience the world as we do? Scott Robinson, a social scientist who implements AI and augmented intelligence systems in the corporate world, takes on these questions and others in these surveys of AI in fiction and the real world: What would it take to create a true artificial mind, if it's even possible? What are the building blocks of consciousness, and how could they be recreated in a machine? What can human society learn from the AI of fiction? And if we can actually build conscious machines - should we? With fan service to spare, AI in Sci-Fi tours the science fiction universe for its fascinating artificial life, reaching into the imagination for inspirations that will guide our path tomorrow, as human and machine enter into permanent partnership...
To the Toppermost of the Poppermost!
When they were together, the Beatles put out 27 #1 hit singles - a record that remains unbroken, 50 years later. Astonishingly, they proceeded to accumulate 20 more as solo artists, a feat likewise never duplicated. All 47 songs are documented in this accessible, trivia-filled compendium, a must-have for lovers of the band's timeless music.