Singularity Hypotheses: An Overview

Bill Joy in a widely read but controversial article claimed that the most powerful 21st century technologies are threatening to make humans an endangered species. Indeed, a growing number of scientists, philosophers and forecasters insist that the accelerating progress in disruptive technologies such as artificial intelligence, robotics, genetic engineering, and nanotechnology may lead to what they refer to as the technological singularity: an event or phase that will radically change human civilization, and perhaps even human nature itself, before the middle of the 21st century

Psychotherapy in the era of artificial intelligence: Therapist Panoptes

“What will happen when an artificial intelligence entity has access to all the information stored about me online, with the ability to process my information efficiently and flawlessly? Will such an entity not be, in fact, my ideal therapist?” Would there ever come a point at which you would put your trust in an omniscient, apperceptive, and ultra-intelligent robotic therapist? There is a horizon beyond which we can neither see nor even imagine; this is the technological singularity moment for psychotherapy. If human intelligence is capable of creating an artificial intelligence that surpasses its creators, then this intelligence would, in turn, be able to create an even superior next-generation intelligence. An inevitable positive feedback loop would lead to an exponential intelligence growth rate. In the present paper, we introduce the term Therapist Panoptes as a working hypothesis to investigate the implications for psychotherapy of an artificial therapeutic agent: one that is able to access all available data for a potential client and process these with an inconceivably superior intelligence. Although this opens a new perspective on the future of psychotherapy, the sensitive dependence of complex techno-social systems on their initial conditions renders any prediction impossible. Artificial intelligence and humans form a bio-techno-social system, and the evolution of the participating actors in this complex super-organism depends upon their individual action, as well as upon each actor being a coevolving part of a self-organized whole

The Stuff We Swim in: Regulation Alone Will Not Lead to Justifiable Trust in AI

Recent activity in the field of artificial intelligence (AI) has given rise to large language models (LLMs) such as GPT-4 and Bard. These are undoubtedly impressive achievements, but they raise serious questions about appropriation, accuracy, explainability, accessibility, responsibility, and more. There have been pusillanimous and self-exculpating calls for a halt in development by senior researchers in the field and largely self-serving comments by industry leaders around the potential of AI systems, good or bad. Many of these commentaries leverage misguided conceptions, in the popular imagination, of the competence of machine intelligence, based on some sort of Frankenstein or Terminator-like fiction: however, this leaves it entirely unclear what exactly the relationship between human(ity) and AI, as represented by LLMs or what comes after, is or could be

The influence of Albert Einstein and Quantum Physics in Kurt Vonnegut’s narrative

En el presente trabajo se analiza la profunda influencia que las teorías científicas de Albert Einstein y alguno de sus discípulos y colaboradores más cercanos ejerce en la narrativa del novelista norteamericano de origen alemán Kurt Vonnegut (1922-2007). Para llevar a cabo el objetivo propuesto, en primer lugar se explora el papel de Einstein como revolucionario cultural, centránsose en su repercusión en el campo de las letras norteamericanas. Una vez llevada a cabo esta tarea, preliminiar pero indispensable, el artículo rastrea las referencias al científico suizo en el corpus de Vonnegut, así como los numerosos momentos en que postulados teóricos provenientes de la física cuántica sirven para sustentar hilos o motivos argumentales dentro del mismoThis paper focuses on the deep influence that Albert Einstein and some of his closest disciples and colaborators played on Kurt Vonnegut‟s narrative. In order to achieve this goal, the study starts by analyzing Einstein‟s role as a maker of modern culture in general and as a seminal influence on contemporary American novelists in particular. Once this prliminary and indispensable tasks has been fulfilled, I move on to examine Einstein‟s direct references on Vonnegut‟s novels as well as how some theories from the field of Quantum Physics become necessary elements in order to sustain some thematic issues or elements within Vonnegut‟s corpu

On Unity Experiences: A Review

Unity is both complex and elegant which in itself reflects the Universe. Experiencing unity is examined philosophically as a natural human desire for reasoned reality. From a spiritual perspective it may be the return to our original divine essence. From a neuroscientific view, it may be neurocorrelates in the brain resonating with an electrical field. And from a physics perspective, it may be particle entanglement and spin-wave directionality. The debate is broad and deep. The prevailing western framework for exploring such a topic is rational cognitivism, and intersects several disciplines including; cognitive science, consciousness studies, neuroscience, philosophy, phenomenology, psychology and its subgroup transpersonal psychology, cosmology, spirituality, and most recently, quantum mechanics. Each of these frameworks engages a Cartesian-Newtonian methodology of dissecting component parts for study, and collecting empirical support for validation of the direct unity experience. There is a continued quest for reasoned certainty and absolutism with this method. Alternatively, Eastern practices, particularly Buddhism, engage the disciplines of mindfulness, awareness and philosophical exploration. This is a discipline of openness that respects the isness of direct experience, unity experiences (UE’s) included. There is no absolute knowing or need for empiricism. Those are concepts of the mind that are considered illusory. The exploration takes the researcher into dissolution of form, attachment and illusion, and what constitutes conceptual illusory coverings of Buddha potential in all sentient beings. What is currently emerging in researching human experience is a blending of Eastern and Western operational paradigms. The Dalai Lamas’ interest and participation in neuroscientific research on meditating Buddhist monks attests to this development. This literature review takes a meta-perspective in the discussion of unity and its apparent counterpoint, dualism. Definitions concerning unity experiences are embedded in the paper as we begin our exploration. General themes addressed in this review of the literature include; subjective experience, experiential content and meaning-making, unity experience within a holographic framework, permeable membrane of perception in an autopoietic system, discrete and coherent perception of the discrete and coherent (repetition intentional). What is not addressed that may have some relevance to the unity experience, is cosmology and an in-depth review of the literature on neuroscience and physics. This paper focuses on the experience itself within an historical view of what has impacted our current thinking, and an East-West perspective on consciousness

The entelechy of "Penelope" : the epiphany of the eternal in the temporal

By an entelechy we mean a completely realized actuality, and by an epiphany a sudden realization and at the same time manifestation of the entire anima (i.e. "soul") living in an object which we observe. This study proposes an examination of the final epiphany, the "Penelope" section, of Ulysses. A number of critical studies devoted to Joyce have agreed that "Penelope" is the epiphany of all that has happened in the book. However, estimates of what that epiphany ultimately does or what it epiphanizes--spiritually manifests--on the whole widely vary. As I find, mostly the critics are right always at one point and never at another. All of them suffer the chronic sickness in modern criticism, "dissociation of sensibility", and Chapter I of this thesis examines some of the symptoms and causes of this sickness. Chapter II considers, as an opposition to the dissociated sensibilities, Joyce's synthetic mind as we find in his making of "Penelope": the enormous synthetic power synthesizing an infinite number of various elements into a whole. Chapter III concentrates upon the entelechy of "Penelope", and inquires into what this entelechy finally achieves. The conclusion of this thesis identifies the final epiphany with a manifestation of the Creative God realized through this entelechy