How We Lost Our Minds: Me, MySELF and AI

How We Lost Our Minds is a tale of two spells. On the one hand, we mistook brains for persons. On the other, we mistook machines for mortals.Can neural networks "know"? Are LLM chatbots conscious? Are humans "computers made of meat"? The answers are all here.Above all, as we will see, AI is an artifact of mathematics. As such, AI itself bears witness to a world beyond bits and bytes, ones and zeros. It is the world of mind affirmed by the greatest mathematicians of all time.Now, some 40 years after organizing a landmark Yale University conference on "Artificial Intelligence and the human mind" - with four Nobel Laureates and AI pioneers including Marvin Minsky of MIT, Doug Lenat of Stanford, and Hans Moravec of Carnegie-Mellon - author R.A. Varghese revisits the same newly relevant theme. With a focus on understanding, consciousness, and personhood in the context of neural networks, deep learning, large language models, world simulations, and intelligent agents, this book cuts through the hype to reveal what AI can and cannot do.Endorsed by Nobel Prize winners Charles H. Townes (inventor of the laser) and Arno Penzias (discoverer of the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation), Varghese brings his decades of expertise in consciousness and mind to bear on the most pressing questions of the AI age.