Dr. David Faitelson, Afeka Tel Aviv Academic College of Engineering (IL)
Abstract: I would like to reorient the way we look at intelligent machines using two seemingly contradictory viewpoints. In the first part of my talk, I will use several simple thought experiments to demonstrate that intelligent machines, albeit extremely powerful and useful, are just mechanical devices, with no actual intelligence or consciousness. Their purpose and meaning is determined only with regard to their usefulness to us. In the second part of my talk I will argue that in order to successfully exploit the potential of intelligent machines, we should design them to mimic conscious beings. This mimicry is required for two major reasons: first, our perception is extremely well adapted to communicate with other living beings. Thus, this mode of communication is a wide channel through which we can process large amounts of information quickly and effortlessly. Second, intelligent machines are most useful when they are autonomous. An autonomous agent is useful if we can give it a goal and leave it alone, freeing us to work at a higher level. This kind of interaction is similar to how we work with animals like dogs and horses, something we have been doing successfully for thousands of years. Thus, this is a good model for designing interaction between us and our autonomous machines. Finally, I will conclude my talk with a call to designers to wrest control of intelligent machines development from the hands of the technologists, because only the designers can ensure that this powerful technology will serve us humans rather than the other way around.
Short CV: Dr. David Faitelson received his B.Sc in Computer Science and Mathematics from Tel Aviv university(1995), and his M.Sc (2004) and Ph.D (2008) in Software Engineering and Computer Science from the University of Oxford. Prior to his academic career, David has spent 10 years as a software engineer and consultant. In 2007 David was a post-doc researcher at the Computer Science department of the Technion. Currently, David is a senior lecturer at the Afeka Academic College of Engineering, and studying for an M. Integrated Design at the Holon Institute for Technology. David’s research interests include the application of formal mathematics to the construction of correct software, computational biomimicry, parallel programming languages, and the design of intelligent robots.