Interesting Stuff Group

Next Meeting: Saturday 10 April 2010, hour and location TBA.







Topic: Moral Machines

Readings

Wendel Wallach.   Moral Machines: Teaching Robots Right from Wrong. Oxford University Press, 2008, 288 pages. We are honored by a planned visit from the author.

From the product description on Amazon:

Computers are already approving financial transactions, controlling electrical supplies, and driving trains. Soon, service robots will be taking care of the elderly in their homes, and military robots will have their own targeting and firing protocols. Colin Allen and Wendell Wallach argue that as robots take on more and more responsibility, they must be programmed with moral decision-making abilities, for our own safety. Taking a fast paced tour through the latest thinking about philosophical ethics and artificial intelligence, the authors argue that even if full moral agency for machines is a long way off, it is already necessary to start building a kind of functional morality, in which artificial moral agents have some basic ethical sensitivity. But the standard ethical theories don't seem adequate, and more socially engaged and engaging robots will be needed. As the authors show, the quest to build machines that are capable of telling right from wrong has begun.

Apostolos Doxiadis and Christos Papadimitriou. Logicomix: An Epic Search for Truth. Bloomsbury Press, 2009, 352 pages.

From the description on Amazon:

This exceptional graphic novel recounts the spiritual odyssey of philosopher Bertrand Russell. In his agonized search for absolute truth, Russell crosses paths with legendary thinkers like Gottlob Frege, David Hilbert, and Kurt Gödel, and finds a passionate student in the great Ludwig Wittgenstein. But his most ambitious goal--to establish unshakable logical foundations of mathematics -- continues to loom before him. Through love and hate, peace and war, Russell persists in the dogged mission that threatens to claim both his career and his personal happiness, finally driving him to the brink of insanity.

Food

TBA

Video

Simon suggests Dead Snow or Zombieland.

A little history...

The IS (Interesting Stuff) Group was started some time in the dim past by Elliot Saltzman and Philip Rubin to discuss interesting stuff. In particular, we felt that this group would afford us the opportunity to read stuff that we really wanted to read but would otherwise never get a chance to (science fiction, comic books, nonlinear dynamics, evolution, complexity, biology, fractals, ontology, connectionism, faith healing, etc.) More importantly, the meeting also provided another good chance to eat lots of junk food and watch really crappy movies.

If you decide to come to one of these meetings, please bring beer, lots of junk food, beer, and, not to forget, some beer. The after-meeting movie is not mandatory, but it is truly the reason that we have these meetings.

For more detail, see the IS Archive, and be sure to check out the I.S. Blog