Social Machinery and Intelligence

Social machines are systems formed by technical and human elements interacting in a structured manner. The use of digital platforms as mediators allows large numbers of human participants to join such mechanisms, creating systems where interconnected digital and human components operate as a single machine capable of highly sophisticated behaviour. Under certain conditions, such systems can be described as autonomous and goal-driven agents. Many examples of modern Artificial Intelligence (AI) can be regarded as instances of this class of mechanisms. We argue that this type of autonomous social machines has provided a new paradigm for the design of intelligent systems marking a new phase in the field of AI. The consequences of this observation range from methodological, philosophical to ethical. On the one side, it emphasises the role of Human-Computer Interaction in the design of intelligent systems, while on the other side it draws attention to both the risks for a human being and those for a society relying on mechanisms that are not necessarily controllable. The difficulty by companies in regulating the spread of misinformation, as well as those by authorities to protect task-workers managed by a software infrastructure, could be just some of the effects of this technological paradigm

Landauer Defended: Reply to Norton

Ladyman et al (2007) proposed a model of the implementation of logical operations by physical processes in order to clarify the exact statement of Landauer's Principle, and then ordered a new proof of the latter based on the construction of a thermodynamic cycle, arguing that if Landauer's Principle were false it would be possible to harness a machine that violated it to produce a violation of the second law of thermodynamics. In a recent paper in this journal, John Norton (2011) directly challenges the consistency of that proof. In the present paper we defend the proof given by Ladyman et al against his critique. In particular, contrary to what Norton claims, we argue that the pro- cesses used in the proof cannot be used to construct a cycle that enacts erasure in a thermodynamically reversible way, and that he does not show that the processes used in the proof violate the Second Law of Thermodynamics

Landauer Defended: Reply to Norton

Ladyman et al (2007) proposed a model of the implementation of logical operations by physical processes in order to clarify the exact statement of Landauer's Principle, and then ordered a new proof of the latter based on the construction of a thermodynamic cycle, arguing that if Landauer's Principle were false it would be possible to harness a machine that violated it to produce a violation of the second law of thermodynamics. In a recent paper in this journal, John Norton (2011) directly challenges the consistency of that proof. In the present paper we defend the proof given by Ladyman et al against his critique. In particular, contrary to what Norton claims, we argue that the pro- cesses used in the proof cannot be used to construct a cycle that enacts erasure in a thermodynamically reversible way, and that he does not show that the processes used in the proof violate the Second Law of Thermodynamics