Bots and Beasts

Bots and Beasts PDF Author: Paul Thagard
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262548542
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 307

Get Book Here

Book Description
An expert on mind considers how animals and smart machines measure up to human intelligence. Octopuses can open jars to get food, and chimpanzees can plan for the future. An IBM computer named Watson won on Jeopardy! and Alexa knows our favorite songs. But do animals and smart machines really have intelligence comparable to that of humans? In Bots and Beasts, Paul Thagard looks at how computers ("bots") and animals measure up to the minds of people, offering the first systematic comparison of intelligence across machines, animals, and humans. Thagard explains that human intelligence is more than IQ and encompasses such features as problem solving, decision making, and creativity. He uses a checklist of twenty characteristics of human intelligence to evaluate the smartest machines--including Watson, AlphaZero, virtual assistants, and self-driving cars--and the most intelligent animals--including octopuses, dogs, dolphins, bees, and chimpanzees. Neither a romantic enthusiast for nonhuman intelligence nor a skeptical killjoy, Thagard offers a clear assessment. He discusses hotly debated issues about animal intelligence concerning bacterial consciousness, fish pain, and dog jealousy. He evaluates the plausibility of achieving human-level artificial intelligence and considers ethical and policy issues. A full appreciation of human minds reveals that current bots and beasts fall far short of human capabilities.

Bots and Beasts

Bots and Beasts PDF Author: Paul Thagard
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262548542
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 307

Get Book Here

Book Description
An expert on mind considers how animals and smart machines measure up to human intelligence. Octopuses can open jars to get food, and chimpanzees can plan for the future. An IBM computer named Watson won on Jeopardy! and Alexa knows our favorite songs. But do animals and smart machines really have intelligence comparable to that of humans? In Bots and Beasts, Paul Thagard looks at how computers ("bots") and animals measure up to the minds of people, offering the first systematic comparison of intelligence across machines, animals, and humans. Thagard explains that human intelligence is more than IQ and encompasses such features as problem solving, decision making, and creativity. He uses a checklist of twenty characteristics of human intelligence to evaluate the smartest machines--including Watson, AlphaZero, virtual assistants, and self-driving cars--and the most intelligent animals--including octopuses, dogs, dolphins, bees, and chimpanzees. Neither a romantic enthusiast for nonhuman intelligence nor a skeptical killjoy, Thagard offers a clear assessment. He discusses hotly debated issues about animal intelligence concerning bacterial consciousness, fish pain, and dog jealousy. He evaluates the plausibility of achieving human-level artificial intelligence and considers ethical and policy issues. A full appreciation of human minds reveals that current bots and beasts fall far short of human capabilities.

Frankenstein's Cat

Frankenstein's Cat PDF Author: Emily Anthes
Publisher: Scientific American / Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN: 142994952X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 255

Get Book Here

Book Description
Winner of 2014 AAAS/Subaru SB&F Prize for Best Young Adult Science Book Longlisted for the PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award One of Nature's Summer Book Picks One of Publishers Weekly's Top Ten Spring 2013 Science Books For centuries, we've toyed with our creature companions, breeding dogs that herd and hunt, housecats that look like tigers, and teacup pigs that fit snugly in our handbags. But what happens when we take animal alteration a step further, engineering a cat that glows green under ultraviolet light or cloning the beloved family Labrador? Science has given us a whole new toolbox for tinkering with life. How are we using it? In Frankenstein's Cat, the journalist Emily Anthes takes us from petri dish to pet store as she explores how biotechnology is shaping the future of our furry and feathered friends. As she ventures from bucolic barnyards to a "frozen zoo" where scientists are storing DNA from the planet's most exotic creatures, she discovers how we can use cloning to protect endangered species, craft prosthetics to save injured animals, and employ genetic engineering to supply farms with disease-resistant livestock. Along the way, we meet some of the animals that are ushering in this astonishing age of enhancement, including sensor-wearing seals, cyborg beetles, a bionic bulldog, and the world's first cloned cat. Through her encounters with scientists, conservationists, ethicists, and entrepreneurs, Anthes reveals that while some of our interventions may be trivial (behold: the GloFish), others could improve the lives of many species-including our own. So what does biotechnology really mean for the world's wild things? And what do our brave new beasts tell us about ourselves? With keen insight and her trademark spunk, Anthes highlights both the peril and the promise of our scientific superpowers, taking us on an adventure into a world where our grandest science fiction fantasies are fast becoming reality.

Coherence in Thought and Action

Coherence in Thought and Action PDF Author: Paul Thagard
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 9780262700924
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 332

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book is an essay on how people make sense of each other and the world they live in. Making sense is the activity of fitting something puzzling into a coherent pattern of mental representations that include concepts, beliefs, goals, and actions. Paul Thagard proposes a general theory of coherence as the satisfaction of multiple interacting constraints, and discusses the theory's numerous psychological and philosophical applications. Much of human cognition can be understood in terms of coherence as constraint satisfaction, and many of the central problems of philosophy can be given coherence-based solutions. Thagard shows how coherence can help to unify psychology and philosophy, particularly when addressing questions of epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, politics, and aesthetics. He also shows how coherence can integrate cognition and emotion.

Beasts and Gods

Beasts and Gods PDF Author: Roslyn Fuller
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1783605448
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 426

Get Book Here

Book Description
Democracy does not deliver on the things we have assumed are its natural outcomes. This, coupled with a growing sense of malaise in both new and established democracies forms the basis to the assertion made by some, that these are not democracies at all. Through considerable, impressive empirical analysis of a variety of voting methods, across twenty different nations, Roslyn Fuller presents the data that makes this contention indisputable. Proving that the party which forms the government rarely receives the majority of the popular vote, that electoral systems regularly produce manufactured majorities and that the better funded side invariably wins such contests in both elections and referenda, Fuller's findings challenge the most fundamental elements of both national politics and broader society. Beast and Gods argues for a return to democracy as perceived by the ancient Athenians. Boldly arguing for the necessity of the Aristotelian assumption that citizens are agents whose wishes and aims can be attained through participation in politics, and through an examination of what “goods” are provided by democracy, Fuller offers a powerful challenge to the contemporary liberal view that there are no "goods" in politics, only individual citizens seeking to fulfil their particular interests.

Bots' Best Friend

Bots' Best Friend PDF Author: Lucy Rosen (Children's story adapter)
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781424263158
Category : JUVENILE FICTION
Languages : en
Pages : 32

Get Book Here

Book Description
"When the Rescue Bots find a stray dog, they take him home and make him part of the family and the team that protects the good people of Griffin Rock"--

Mind-Society

Mind-Society PDF Author: Paul Thagard
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190686405
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 489

Get Book Here

Book Description
How do minds make societies, and how do societies change? Paul Thagard systematically connects neural and psychological explanations of mind with major social sciences (social psychology, sociology, politics, economics, anthropology, and history) and professions (medicine, law, education, engineering, and business). Social change emerges from interacting social and mental mechanisms. Many economists and political scientists assume that individuals make rational choices, despite the abundance of evidence that people frequently succumb to thinking errors such as motivated inference. Much of sociology and anthropology is taken over with postmodernist assumptions that everything is constructed on the basis of social relations such as power, with no inkling that these relations are mediated by how people think about each other. Mind-Society displays the interdependence of the cognitive and social sciences by describing the interconnections among mental and social mechanisms, which interact to generate social changes ranging from marriage patterns to wars. Validation comes from detailed studies of important social changes, from norms about romantic relationships to economic practices, political institutions, religious customs, and international relations. This book belongs to a trio that includes Brain-Mind: From Neurons to Consciousness and Creativity and Natural Philosophy: From Social Brains to Knowledge, Reality, Morality, and Beauty. They can be read independently, but together they make up a Treatise on Mind and Society that provides a unified and comprehensive treatment of the cognitive sciences, social sciences, professions, and humanities.

Tank & Fizz: The Case of the Battling Bots

Tank & Fizz: The Case of the Battling Bots PDF Author: Liam O'Donnell
Publisher: Orca Book Publishers
ISBN: 1459808142
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 174

Get Book Here

Book Description
In this illustrated middle-grade novel and second book in the Tank & Fizz series, a goblin detective and a technology-tinkering troll must dodge battle bots and spellbooks to prevent the return of an ancient demon.

Transformers Rescue Bots: Reading Adventures

Transformers Rescue Bots: Reading Adventures PDF Author: Hasbro
Publisher: LB Kids
ISBN: 9780316337472
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book Here

Book Description
This bindup of illustrated, television show-based readers is sure to thrill younger Transformers fans! Includes Meet Heatwave, Meet Chase, Meet Blades, Meet Boulder, Team of Heroes, and Meet Optimus Primal. © 2015 Hasbro. All Rights Reserved.

Meet Heatwave the Fire-bot

Meet Heatwave the Fire-bot PDF Author: Lisa Shea
Publisher: Little Brown
ISBN: 9781480609266
Category : Fire engines
Languages : en
Pages : 32

Get Book Here

Book Description
Heatwave changes into a fire truck and is here to rescue.

Meet High Tide

Meet High Tide PDF Author: John Sazaklis
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781484466117
Category : JUVENILE FICTION
Languages : en
Pages : 32

Get Book Here

Book Description
"Optimus Prime wants his friend High Tide to teach the Rescue Bots about water rescues. But first, High Tide must learn about teamwork in order to help protect the people of Griffin Rock"--