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Can humans and artificial intelligences share concepts and communicate? Making AI Intelligible shows that philosophical work on the metaphysics of meaning can help answer these questions. Herman Cappelen and Josh Dever use the externalist tradition in philosophy to create models of how AIs and humans can understand each other. In doing so, they illustrate ways in which that philosophical tradition can be improved.
The questions addressed in the book are not only theoretically interesting, but the answers have pressing practical implications. Many important decisions about human life are now influenced by AI. In giving that power to AI, we presuppose that AIs can track features of the world that we care about (for example, creditworthiness, recidivism, cancer, and combatants). If AIs can share our concepts, that will go some way towards justifying this reliance on AI. This ground-breaking study offers insight into how to take some first steps towards achieving Interpretable AI.
List of contents
- PART I: INTRODUCTION AND OVERVIEW
- 1: Introduction
- 2: Alfred (The Dismissive Sceptic): Philosophers, Go Away!
- PART II: A PROPOSAL FOR HOW TO ATTRIBUTE CONTENT TO AI
- 3: Terminology: Aboutness, Representation, and Metasemantics
- 4: Our Theory: De-Anthropocentrized Externalism
- 5: Application: The Predicate 'High Risk'
- 6: Application: Names and the Mental Files Framework
- 7: Application: Predication and Commitment
- PART III
- 8: Four Concluding Thoughts
- Bibliography
About the author
Herman Cappelen is chair Professor of Philosophy at The University of Hong Kong. He has written and co-authored several books and works in all areas of systematic philosophy.
Josh Dever is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Texas at Austin and Professorial Fellow at the Arche Research Centre at the University of St Andrews.
Summary
This innovative and accessible study illustrates how philosophy can help us understand and improve our interactions with AI.
Report
a thought-provoking overview of the resources available in the contemporary philosophy of language, and their potential application to the interpretation of AI systems. Paul Dicken, Los Angeles Review of Books
