The Engineer

Author(s):  
Tara H. Abraham

This chapter examines the ways that McCulloch’s new research culture at MIT’s Research Laboratory of Electronics shaped the evolution of his scientific identity into that of an engineer. This was an open, fluid, multidisciplinary culture that allowed McCulloch to shift his focus more squarely onto understanding the brain from the perspective of theoretical modelling, and to promote the cybernetic vision to diverse audiences. McCulloch’s practices, performed with a new set of student-collaborators, involved modeling the neurophysiology of perception, understanding reliability in biological systems, and pursuing knowledge of the reticular formation of the brain. The chapter provides a nuanced account of the relations between McCulloch’s work and the emerging fields of artificial intelligence and the cognitive sciences. It also highlights McCulloch’s identities as sage-collaborator and polymath, two roles that in part were the result of his students’ observations and in part products of his own self-fashioning.

2005 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-37
Author(s):  
elisabeth townsend

Humans: The Cooking Ape Perhaps the first to suggest that humans were cooking as early as 1.9 million years ago, Richard Wrangham shows through his new research and his imagination how and possibly when cooking changed humans dramatically. Wrangham, Harvard University primatologist and MacArthur Fellow, has been studying the evolution of human cooking. After 25 years of primate research at his site in Kibale, Uganda, Wrangham is best known for explaining the similarity and differences across species of primate social organizations. In Kibale, he has analyzed chimpanzees’ behavior: how it’s changed when they interact with the environment and how their social groups have evolved. In particular, he noticed how food changed their interactions with each other. Like that of chimps, human behavior has been affected by food, especially as they shifted from raw to cooked food. Moving from eating food as it was discovered to collecting edibles and cooking them altered our social relationships. Cooked food has changed Homo sapiens physically by making food more digestible thereby altering jaws, teeth, and guts, and providing more calories for more expensive organs such as the brain. Wrangham discusses when and how humans may have started using fire to cook food, what they cooked, and the transition from cooking in an outdoor fire to hearths and open ovens.


This is the second volume in Oxford Studies in Experimental Philosophy, a series with the aim of providing a venue for publishing work in this emerging field. Experimental philosophy is a new movement that seeks to use empirical techniques to illuminate some of the oldest issues in philosophy. It is an interdisciplinary field at the intersection of philosophy, psychology, and related disciplines, such as linguistics and sociology. Although the movement is only a few years old, it has already sparked an explosion of new research, challenging a number of cherished assumptions in both philosophy and the cognitive sciences. This volume includes both theoretical and experimental chapters as well as chapters that cross traditional disciplinary boundaries. It is divided into three parts that explore epistemology, moral and political philosophy, and metaphysics and mind, showcasing the diversity of work that has arisen as traditionally philosophical questions have met the tools of social science.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (11) ◽  
pp. 6038
Author(s):  
Sergio Alonso ◽  
Rosana Montes ◽  
Daniel Molina ◽  
Iván Palomares ◽  
Eugenio Martínez-Cámara ◽  
...  

The United Nations Agenda 2030 established 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as a guideline to guarantee a sustainable worldwide development. Recent advances in artificial intelligence and other digital technologies have already changed several areas of modern society, and they could be very useful to reach these sustainable goals. In this paper we propose a novel decision making model based on surveys that ranks recommendations on the use of different artificial intelligence and related technologies to achieve the SDGs. According to the surveys, our decision making method is able to determine which of these technologies are worth investing in to lead new research to successfully tackle with sustainability challenges.


1991 ◽  
Vol 45 (10) ◽  
pp. 1739-1745
Author(s):  
Min J. Yang ◽  
Paul W. Yang

A computerized infrared interpreter has been developed on an IBM personal computer (PC) running under the Microsoft disk operating system (DOS). Based on the original Merck Sharp & Dhome Research Laboratory Program for the Analysis of InfRared Spectra (PAIRS), this infrared interpreter, PC PAIRS+, is capable of analyzing infrared spectra measured from a wide variety of spectrophotometers. Modifications to PAIRS now allow the application of both artificial intelligence and library searching techniques in the program. A new algorithm has been devised to combine the results from the library searching and the PAIRS program to enhance the dependability of interpretational data. The increased capability of this infrared interpreter along with its applicability on a personal computer results in a powerful, general-purpose, and easy-to-use infrared interpretation system. Applications of PC PAIRS+ on petrochemical samples are described.


DIALOGO ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 189-200
Author(s):  
Tudor-Cosmin Ciocan ◽  
Any Docu Axelerad ◽  
Maria CIOCAN ◽  
Alina Zorina Stroe ◽  
Silviu Docu Axelerad ◽  
...  

Ancient beliefs such as astral projection, human possession, abduction and other similar are not only universal, taught by all religions, but also used as premises for core believes/expectations, such as after-life, eternal damnation, reincarnation, and many others. Transferring Consciousness to a Synthetic Body is also a feature of interest in our actual knowledge, both religious as for science. If immortality were an option, would you take it into consideration more seriously? Most people would probably dismiss the question since immortality isn’t a real deal to contract. But what if having eternal life was a possibility in today’s world? The possibility of the transfer of human consciousness to a synthetic body can soon become a reality, and it could help the world for the better. Thus, until recently, the subject was mostly proposed by religion(s) and saw as a spiritual [thus, not ‘materially real’ or ‘forthwith accomplishable’] proposal therefore not really fully engaged or trust if not a religious believer. Now, technology is evolving, and so are we. The world has come to a point where artificial intelligence is breaking the boundaries of our perception of human consciousness and intelligence. And with this so is our understanding about the ancient question ‘who are we?’ concerning consciousness and how this human feature sticks to our body or it can become an entity beyond the material flesh. Without being exhaustive with the theme's development [leaving enough room for further investigations], we would like to take it for a spin and see how and where the religious and neuroscience realms intersect with it for a global, perhaps holistic understanding. Developments in neurotechnology favor the brain to broaden its physical control further the restraints of the human body. Accordingly, it is achievable to both acquire and provide information from and to the brain and also to organize feedback processes in which a person's thoughts can influence the activity of a computer or reversely.


2017 ◽  
Vol 26 (3) ◽  
pp. 433-437
Author(s):  
Mark Dougherty

AbstractForgetting is an oft-forgotten art. Many artificial intelligence (AI) systems deliver good performance when first implemented; however, as the contextual environment changes, they become out of date and their performance degrades. Learning new knowledge is part of the solution, but forgetting outdated facts and information is a vital part of the process of renewal. However, forgetting proves to be a surprisingly difficult concept to either understand or implement. Much of AI is based on analogies with natural systems, and although all of us have plenty of experiences with having forgotten something, as yet we have only an incomplete picture of how this process occurs in the brain. A recent judgment by the European Court concerns the “right to be forgotten” by web index services such as Google. This has made debate and research into the concept of forgetting very urgent. Given the rapid growth in requests for pages to be forgotten, it is clear that the process will have to be automated and that intelligent systems of forgetting are required in order to meet this challenge.


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