Anandi Hattiangadi: Artificial General Intelligence: A Philosopher’s Manifesto

Experts in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and tech industry insiders predict the imminent emergence of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI): machines that are at least as intelligent as humans. Optimists expect AGIs to solve humanity's problems, while doomsayers worry they would render us extinct. Yet there is a critical flaw in popular conceptions of AGI. This skews AGI timelines and our assessments of risks and opportunities. To correct this misconception, we need to return to fundamental philosophical questions about what makes human cognition distinctive and what is required for an artificial system to think like a human. In this presentation, I put forward a novel account of distinctively human cognition and apply it to the interpretation of AI. The upshot is surprising. It turns out that we should be less afraid of machines that think like us than of machines that fool us into thinking that they do.


Anandi Hattiangadi is a professor of philosophy at Stockholm University and a Researcher at the Institute for Futures Studies. She specializes in the philosophy of mind, language, and cognitive science, and is currently writing a monograph on artificial general intelligence.

Møteleder: Jonathan Knowles