Algorithmic Mysterianism: Or How I Learned to Stop Explaining and Love the Black Box
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Bill Ramsey, Dept. of Philosophy, University of Nevada Las Vegas — There has been a tremendous amount of attention, analysis, speculation and awe directed at recent developments in artificial intelligence. And yet despite expressions of how mind-blowing these new AI systems are, there is actually reason to think that their radical nature has not been fully appreciated. Specifically, there is motivation for thinking that these networks point to a fundamental discovery about reasoning in general and human reasoning in particular that merits further consideration. The possible discovery is this: There are styles of problem solving and information processing that are completely unintelligible to the human mind. Unlike traditional AI, and indeed, every other invention in human history, the strategies and competencies exhibited by modern AI systems are, in large measure, incomprehensible to us. This is often referred to as the “Black Box” nature of these systems.
In this talk, I will put forward a position that I will call “Algorithmic Mysterianism”, based upon the account of scientific mysterianism developed by Colin McGinn. McGinn’s position stems from two central premises: 1) if we take seriously the evolutionary development of our cognitive systems, we should expect there to be aspects of reality that we are not cognitively equipped to comprehend, and 2) we have already discovered some aspects of reality that transcend comprehensibility. My view is that we are just now discovering one further part of reality that our faculties cannot comprehend; namely, a style of reasoning that is exhibited by most modern AI systems. In essence, I want to suggest that these systems have revealed to us that there is a form of problem-solving that is currently indecipherable to the human mind. What is fascinating about this dilemma is that it suggests the strategies we normally employ for making sense of things is, itself, incapable of making sense of other strategies for making sense of things.
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Free
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Open to the public
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UNLV Dept. of Philosophy