I was surprised way back when I learned that we had already located some neurons which seem to encode the expected utility of possible actions. (‘Utility’ here isn’t meant in the philosophical sense but in the neuroeconomic sense.)
I also remember being amused 1+ years ago when I did some more studying in AI and decision theory and learned that all currently described AI agents are Cartesian dualists. (This is old news ’round these parts, I know.)
Some AI have a limited understanding of their own bodies; they can learn kinematic models of the actuators in the robots they control or form “affordances”, ideas about what kind of interactions with their environments they can effect. But very few (apparently no?) cognitive architectures or AI designs model thier minds as being algorithms executing on their computing hardware, so whatever metacognitive representation and processing they have, it’s “disembodied”, like old ideas of the mind being made of spooky stuff. The combination of physical bodies and spooky minds is called Cartesian Dualism after philospher René Descartes.
Not very recent, but...
I was surprised way back when I learned that we had already located some neurons which seem to encode the expected utility of possible actions. (‘Utility’ here isn’t meant in the philosophical sense but in the neuroeconomic sense.)
I also remember being amused 1+ years ago when I did some more studying in AI and decision theory and learned that all currently described AI agents are Cartesian dualists. (This is old news ’round these parts, I know.)
I don’t quite understand what you mean by that, can you elaborate?
Some AI have a limited understanding of their own bodies; they can learn kinematic models of the actuators in the robots they control or form “affordances”, ideas about what kind of interactions with their environments they can effect. But very few (apparently no?) cognitive architectures or AI designs model thier minds as being algorithms executing on their computing hardware, so whatever metacognitive representation and processing they have, it’s “disembodied”, like old ideas of the mind being made of spooky stuff. The combination of physical bodies and spooky minds is called Cartesian Dualism after philospher René Descartes.