10-721 Philosophical Foundations of Machine Intelligence
6 units, Carnegie Mellon University
What is this field What are its normative aims What are its modes of inquiry What are and have been its intellectual and ideological commitments What foundational questions is it in dialogue with, and what foundational obstacles obstruct its progress Finally What are our responsibilities as researchers practitioners deploying this technology What is this field What are its normative aims What are its modes of inquiry What are and have been its intellectual and ideological commitments What foundational questions is it in dialogue with, and what foundational obstacles obstruct its progress Finally What are our responsibilities as researchers practitioners deploying this technology The pursuit of machine intelligence holds philosophical significance, both because of the fields own philosophical commitments, because it seeks knowingly or not to resolve questions of longstanding philosophical interest, and because of its role as a longstanding object of interest to philosophers of science and mind. However, these matters are seldom addressed in machine learning curricula or papers. This is an exploratory seminarstyle course aimed at inlining the philosophical problems surrounding machine intelligence into the machine learning curriculum. We will address the origins of the field through its foundational writings e.g., Turing, Weiner, McCarthy, Simon, Rumelhart, etc. We will explore the fundamental problem of learning from observationincluding both the problem of induction e.g., setting Popper in dialogue with Vapnik and Wolpert and the formation, evolution, and abandonment of concepts. Additionally, we will explore the foundations of the technical language used to formulate our inquiry, including probability and causality. Finally, we will discuss the ethical considerations and epistemic limitations associated with automating decisions with the current generation of technology.
Prerequisites: none listed
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