Joanna Kavenna
Wittgenstein for Robots
12 Bytes: How We Got Here, Where We Might Go Next
By Jeanette Winterson
Jonathan Cape 288pp £16.99
If the robots are coming, will you run to greet them or run away? Or would you prefer to do something else entirely, like sit quietly with a margarita and a good book? Besides, do we even have the time to deal with super-intelligent robots, or even a bunch of fairly stupid ones, as well as everything else? It reminds me of what Mark Twain once wrote about having masses of work but being continually interrupted by a ghost that wanted to haunt him. Eventually he told the ghost to come back later as he was on a really bad deadline (I paraphrase, slightly). However, it’s also the case that artificial intelligence (AI) is all around us, irrespective of whether we want it and whether we have time to deal with it. It is in phones, laptops, microwaves, washing machines, voice- and face-recognition software, driverless cars, drones and the web, where algorithms nudge us and guide us around. None of these is intelligent in the sense that it is massively into Wittgenstein’s Tractatus or Gödel’s incompleteness theorems. AI largely involves mimicking and modelling, not pondering the meaning of life. Then there is the notion of artificial general intelligence (AGI) – the theory that there will come a point when machines become autonomous and Siri doesn’t want to be friends with us anymore.
The whole subject is fraught with conceptual difficulties. For a start, what do we mean by intelligence? When we lack a unified theory of consciousness, can we fully understand human or even machine intelligence anyway? Have we all watched too many Terminator films? Jeanette Winterson has thought deeply
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
Twitter Feed
Knowledge of Sufism increased markedly with the publication in 1964 of The Sufis, by Idries Shah. Nowadays his writings, much like his father’s, are dismissed for their Orientalism and inaccuracy.
@fitzmorrissey investigates who the Shahs really were.
Fitzroy Morrissey - Sufism Goes West
Fitzroy Morrissey: Sufism Goes West - Empire’s Son, Empire’s Orphan: The Fantastical Lives of Ikbal and Idries Shah by Nile Green
literaryreview.co.uk
Rats have plagued cities for centuries. But in Baltimore, researchers alighted on one surprising solution to the problem of rat infestation: more rats.
@WillWiles looks at what lessons can be learned from rat ecosystems – for both rats and humans.
Will Wiles - Puss Gets the Boot
Will Wiles: Puss Gets the Boot - Rat City: Overcrowding and Urban Derangement in the Rodent Universes of John B ...
literaryreview.co.uk
Twisters features destructive tempests and blockbuster action sequences.
@JonathanRomney asks what the real danger is in Lee Isaac Chung's disaster movie.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/eyes-of-the-storm