Mark Changizi at RPI (and may I say: damn, do they have a good PR department) is being reported as having ‘proven that some people can see into the future’ or having ‘discovered the key to all optical illusions’, depending on who you read:

Crystal (Eye) Ball: Visual System Equipped With ‘Future Seeing Powers’ (Science Daily.com - a copy of the original press release, which can be found: at RPI)

Key to All Optical Illusions Discovered (Yahoo News)

I Can See The Future - And Apparently, So Can You (shortnews.com)

Scientist: Humans Can See Into Future (Fox News.com)

Humans can ‘foresee the future’ (Times of India)

I’m excited to hear about evidence for a neural correlate of the specious present, but let’s not get carried away with our science journalism, please! Whenever I bring the idea of the specious present up in class, I usually cite this interview with, of all people, LeBron James:

GQ-The Fast Education of LeBron James

In the third paragraph, he says “I don’t want to sound cocky when I say this, but it’s like I see things before they happen. I kind of know where the defenders are gonna be. I kind of know where my teammates are gonna be, sometimes even before they know.” Given that all human behaviors (esp. those with clean neural correlates like this story claims) are subject to standard statistical variation, is it not possible that LeBron (and perhaps most quarterbacks and point-guards) are just statistical outliers with respect to this ability?

‘Science Daily’ has an article interviewing Selmer Bringsjord on his creation of an artificial reasoner on second life:
Bringing Second Life To Life: Researchers Create Character With Reasoning Abilities Of A Child

and
AI-Based Virtual Child Plays in Second Life and Child-like intelligence created in Second Life

Machines ‘to match man by 2029′

I’m not an AI skeptic - I wouldn’t be in this specialization if I were - but I get really sick of these predictions. My father tells a (possibly) apocryphal story of sitting in Marvin Minsky’s course back in 1955 (or so). Minsky gets up, hammers his first on the podium, and announces “we’ll have artificially intelligent machines within 5 years!” Sometime in the middle 80’s, Minsky was interviewed by Parade magazine (or some other such tabloid) and he was quoted as saying “we’ll have artificially intelligent machines within 5 years!” While I understand the need for popular outreach (I’ve written for Philosophy and the Grateful Dead, for goodness sakes) for both pedagogy and funding, I wish that our ’spokespeople’ would be more careful.

Now you are ready for a great discussion about what intelligence really is. Simple knee-jerk reactions aren’t sufficient any more. Yes, even the learning version of Larry may not be intelligent, but why not? Students throw out lots of ideas and then you stop, as if surprised, and say: “Wow. That exactly what Alan Turing said and he may have been the most brilliant thinker about AI that ever lived. This leads nicely into the Turing Test and the importance of being able to give rich, flexible responses to a wide range of different situations if something is to be considered “intelligent.”

The Windows version of Larry Learner is the best to use in the classroom. But if you can’t run Windows there is also a Java-script version on our website. You can get both here: Larry Learner — An AI Program (Overview)

I have also created a webpage that takes a student through all of these issues in a way that is fairly similar to how I do it in the classroom.

Intelligence, computers, and robots

I recommend that you read it to get ideas about how to use the program in the classroom, but that you do it all yourself rather than assigning this reading to the students. If you don’t want to take the time to do it in the classroom, or don’t have the technology, you can have the students read it on their own and then you can discuss it.