Philosophy and Theory of Artificial Intelligence 2021

This book gathers contributions from the fourth edition of the Conference on “Philosophy and Theory of Artificial Intelligence” (PT-AI), held on 27-28th of September 2021 at Chalmers University of Technology, in Gothenburg, Sweden. It covers topics at the interface between philosophy, cognitive science, ethics and computing. It discusses advanced theories fostering the understanding of human cognition, human autonomy, dignity and morality, and the development of corresponding artificial cognitive structures, analyzing important aspects of the relationship between humans and AI systems, including the ethics of AI. This book offers a thought-provoking snapshot of what is currently going on, and what are the main challenges, in the multidisciplinary field of the philosophy of artificial intelligence.

Table of Contents

• Theory
• Cognitive Architectures Based on Natural Info-Computation
• Artificial Intelligence Systems, Responsibility and Agential Self-Awareness
• Models, Algorithms, and the Subjects of Transparency
• Autonomy of Attention
• Toward Out-of-Distribution Generalization Through Inductive Biases
• Is There a Trade-Off Between Human Autonomy and the ‘Autonomy’ of Al Systems?
• Towards a Taxonomy for the Opacity of Al Systems
• Validating Non-trivial Semantic Properties of Autonomous Robots
• Ethics
• Dignity in Digital Ethics
• An Enactive Approach to Value Alignment in Artificial Intelligence: A Matter of Relevance
• The Problem of Al Influence
• Artificial General Intelligence and the Common Sense Argument
• Moral Status of Al Systems: Evaluation of the Genetic Account
• Deception by Default
• Robot Rights in Joint Action
• Is It Likely that We Are Living in a Computer Simulation?
• Human-Al Friendship: Rejecting the Appropriate Sentimentality Criterion
• Al Risk Skepticism

About the Author

Vincent C. Müller is AvH Professor for Philosophy and Ethics of AI and Director of the Centre for Philosophy and AI Research (PAIR) at FAU Erlangen-Nuremberg – as well as Visiting Professor at TU Eindhoven, Turing Fellow at the Alan Turing Institute (London), President of the European Society for Cognitive Systems and Chair of the euRobotics topics group on ‘ethical, legal and socio-economic issues’. He was Professor at the Technical University of Eindhoven (2019-22) and at Anatolia College/ACT (Thessaloniki) (1998-2019), as well as James Martin Research Fellow at the University of Oxford (2011-15) and Stanley J. Seeger Fellow at Princeton University (2005-6). Müller studied philosophy with cognitive science, linguistics and history at the universities of Marburg, Hamburg, London and Oxford.

  Müller works mainly on philosophical problems connected to artificial intelligence, both in ethics and in theoretical philosophy. His publications are cited >1/day. Müller edits the “Oxford handbook of the philosophy of artificial intelligence” (OUP), wrote the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy article on Ethics of AI and Robotics and has a book forthcoming with OUP on “Can Machines Think?”, as well as a book with CUP on “Artificial Minds” (with G. Löhr). He frequently presents invited talks around the world and he has organised ca. 25 conferences or workshops, among them a prominent conference series on the Philosophy and Theory of AI (PT-AI). Currently, Müller is one of the 32 experts on the Global Partnership on AI (GPAI) and he is a member of the OECD Network of Experts on AI. In 2022, he was awarded the personal science prize “Alexander von Humboldt Professor”, worth €3.5M, together with a professorship and matching funds from the university (ca. €1.5M). He has generated ca. €9.8M research income for his institutions.