Epstein Secrets

mits on computational resources. The efficacy of human algorithms springs from what AI researchers refer to as “bounded optimality.” As psychologist Daniel Kahneman has notably pointed out, human beings are rational only up to a point. If you were perfectly rational, you would risk dropping dead before making an

n Turing wondered what it would take for machines to become intelligent. John von Neumann wondered what it would take for machines to self-reproduce. Claude Shannon wondered what it would take for machines to communicate reliably, no matter how much noise intervened. Norbert Wiener wondered how long it wo

xperiments like John Searle’s Chinese Room and Isaac Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics all appeal to the sorts of intuitions plaguing human brains that Daniel Kahneman, Amos Tversky, and others have demonstrated. The Chinese Room experiment posits that a mind composed of mechanical and Homo sapiens parts cannot be c

, “A Scientist Rebels,” Zhe Atlantic Monthly, January 1947. 31 Warren Weaver, “Recent Contributions to the Mathematical Theory of Communication,” in Claude Shannon & Warren Weaver, The Mathematical Theory of Communication (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1949), p. 8 (emphasis in original). Shan

mits on computational resources. The efficacy of human algorithms springs from what AI researchers refer to as “bounded optimality.” As psychologist Daniel Kahneman has notably pointed out, human beings are rational only up to a point. If you were perfectly rational, you would risk dropping dead before making an

n Turing wondered what it would take for machines to become intelligent. John von Neumann wondered what it would take for machines to self-reproduce. Claude Shannon wondered what it would take for machines to communicate reliably, no matter how much noise intervened. Norbert Wiener wondered how long it wo

xperiments like John Searle’s Chinese Room and Isaac Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics all appeal to the sorts of intuitions plaguing human brains that Daniel Kahneman, Amos Tversky, and others have demonstrated. The Chinese Room experiment posits that a mind composed of mechanical and Homo sapiens parts cannot be c

, “A Scientist Rebels,” Zhe Atlantic Monthly, January 1947. 31 Warren Weaver, “Recent Contributions to the Mathematical Theory of Communication,” in Claude Shannon & Warren Weaver, The Mathematical Theory of Communication (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1949), p. 8 (emphasis in original). Shan