abstract

In this talk I will analyze some recent publications in advanced artificial intelligence (AI) research, with the aim of shedding light on a cluster of problems with strong connections to classic debates in philosophy of science. I will argue that some core issues of philosophy of science, related, notably, to the nature of scientific theories and their discovery; the nature of scientific explanation; of unification; and of causation also loom large in several branches of cutting-edge AI research. Therefore advances in AI research could, and ideally should, have impact on philosophy of science, and vice versa: both disciplines appear to be intertwined, at least on the conceptual level. I will show that one such branch of AI is ‘explainable AI’ or XAI; another relevant niche is ‘automated scientific discovery’. A more general conclusion that seems to be warranted by our analysis is that where classic AI has been, in essence, ‘data-driven’, the greatest leap forward would be ‘theory-driven’ AI. This conclusion aligns with recent findings in cognitive neuroscience, which I will briefly review.

references

L. Vervoort, T. Blusiewicz, “The CMT model of free will” (2020a), Dialogue, the Canadian Philosophical Review, cf. DOI:10.1017/S0012217320000104  

L. Vervoort, T. Blusiewicz, “Free will and (in)determinism in the brain: a case for naturalized philosophy” (2020b), THEORIA : International Journal for Theory, History and Foundations of Science, Volume 35/3, 345-364 

L. Vervoort, “Probability Theory as a Physical Theory Points to Superdeterminism”, Entropy (2019), 21(9), 848 (1-13)

speaker

I studied physics in Ghent (MSc), Marseille (PhD) and the École Normale Supérieure in Paris (post-doc). After working a few years in high-tech (at Carl Zeiss in Oberkochen and Infineon in Regensburg), I returned to academia and did a PhD in philosophy of science in Montreal. Since 2017 I am associate professor at the School of Advanced Studies of the University of Tyumen, Russia. My main research interests are in philosophy of science, the foundations of physics, and since 2017 in philosophy of mind. In Tyumen I got interested in free will, consciousness and cognition, both natural and in artificial intelligence (AI) systems. The research presented in my talk is the outcome of a collaboration with the Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow (for the AI part) and the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence, Cambridge.