( A Questioning read of six to five minutes)

Can machines achieve “common sense” in the near future?

We have no clue right now how to go about solving this problem.

We are living in a world where common sense ironically is very uncommon.

When you look at the way Artificial Intelligence is destroying what is left it is hard to even define it.

We have to force our ideas to conform to the evidence of reality rather than the other way around.

Commercial Algorithms for profit and big data are creating a world of insecurity with false news destroying the very fabric of society by removing basic knowledge about how the world of human beings works.

Common sense is not rule-based. It is not entirely logical. It is a set of heuristics almost all human beings quickly acquire. Commonsense knowledge encompasses facts that people know and use in their daily lives. It is assumed to be known by average people, therefore it is not verbally communicated most of the time.

Much of the interaction in this digital world happens at a distance, which can diminish the rules of cause and effect, action and consequence. Additionally, much of digital life takes place under the cloak of anonymity, making it easier to participate in unethical and even illegal behaviors.

Common sense, by contrast, is regarded – or rather, it is often disregarded – as a low-level, practical, ‘everyday’ phenomenon, hardly noticed, except when its absence is suddenly revealed in the actions of an otherwise apparently intelligent, capable adult.

It not necessary for us to understand how the software works for the software to be effective.

The universe doesn’t care about our common sense.

With enough data, enough computing power and trial and error, there is no telling what we can find.

A world where brains have been replaced with digital computers.

In some sense, this is what software is all about: extending our intelligence.

What is this “intelligence” we are talking about?

Is AI using nonstandard logics natural deduction, to predict the future of a sequence from observation of its past.

Is there commonsense reasoning in AI- what role of logic is there in AI?

Is there such a thing as AI Philosophy?

Will it be genetically engineered intelligence.?

Though I don’t know much about biology, I doubt that any brain runs at twice the speed of another brain.

Is it logic of obligation and permission;

What facts are observed by AI and how are these facts represented in the memory of a computer, smart phone, iPad?

What rules (if any) permit legitimate conclusions to be drawn from these facts?

Humans up to now are the source of commonsense rules with memory as a constraint.

We may hope that machines will eventually compete with men in all purely intellectual fields. But which are the best ones to start with? Even this is a difficult decision.

We call our phones “smart”, don’t we?

Lots of people want to judge machine intelligence based on human intelligence.

Your intelligence is actually an aggregate of your brain with your environment and the tools and ideas around you. Tools extend our intelligence… with computers and robots being obvious examples. They can always extend your memory with external support (in this case, use a pen and paper, or just Google) and all it might do is slow you down. Except for storage capabilities (memory) and speed, all hardware is equivalent.

I am not sure understanding language and common sense are the same thing. For example, many human beings are illiterate and yet they can be said to have common sense.

Do machines really offer: a new kind of intelligence, a new form of common sense.  It is not necessary for the software to play at “human level”.

By definition, digital media is participatory. To adults it looks like a brave new world – but to kids, it’s “just life.”

Digital life describes the media world our kids inhabit 24/7 – online, on cell phones and mobile devices, and anywhere media is displayed.

The users create the content, and anything created in this digital life becomes instantly viral, scalable, replicable, and viewable by vast, invisible audiences.

This implies an educative process rooted in, and respectful of, people’s lived experience. Unfortunately this is not so. We now have instant gratification, irrelevant of where or how we get it.

As sensing technologies become increasingly distributed and democratized, this dynamic new world requires new comprehension and communication skills, as well as new codes of conduct, to ensure that these powerful media and technologies are used responsibly and ethically.

We all know about Artificial Intelligence.

But is Common sense and the Plane Truth being replaced by machines, simple facts, plain arguments, simplistic assumptions with reliable, independent data have all but disappeared.

The chaotic and contradictory nature of ‘common sense’,  makes it impossible for Machines to evaluate. They are programmed by humans and therefore will never be able to predict their future performance without prejudice and let their feelings decide for themselves.

To achieve any common sense we will need a database containing all the general knowledge that most people possess, represented in a way that it is available to artificial intelligence programs that use natural language or make inferences about the ordinary world. Such a database is a type of ontology of which the most general are called upper ontologies.

” Common sense is the best distributed commodity in the world, for every man is convinced that he is well supplied with it.” Rene Descartes (1596-1650) French philosopher and mathematician.

Le Discours de la method (1637) long-term goals of Artificial Intelligence research. Commonsense reasoning is relevant for many applications, including systems in which robots and humans interact.

To maintain a sophisticated civilization, we have to keep out-innovating our problems. You may have heard that our civilization is not sustainable. We burn too much fossil oil, we pollute too much, there are too many of us, and so on. This is all true. If we are going to keep on surviving, let alone get better, we need to keep on getting smarter even if our brains are standing still biologically at a rate that exceeds our growing problems.

I am generally favorable to any biological technology that can enhance intelligence.

I also think that any long-term intelligence improvement strategy has to take into account that we are become hybrids, part machine, part human beings…The line between digital life’s perils and possibilities is thin.

I am still waiting for a chip that will give me access to the web at the speed of the thought.

The question is whether Gramsci’s distinction between good sense and common sense will be predicated on an irredeemably hierarchical conception of knowledge. One data base against another – Google vers Facebook. Commonsense rule extraction requires minimal human interaction.

Endowing computers with common sense is one of the major problems facing the world.

The relationship between ethics, common sense, and rationality is not just simply feeds books and articles into the computer and has it understand them.

We are if you look at the present state of the Planet we are far from broad deep and robust commonsense reasoning.

Unfortunately, at some point in our lives we give into the fast paced world around us and disregard the faculties of our own mind.

While everyone is entitled to their own beliefs, don’t just turn your brain off and not think about it.  I’m not saying one person or another is right, or wrong.  I’m simply saying that you need to free your mind from the dogma that holds you down from seeking the principles and truths that govern these areas of life.

If we dont start to veting all technology that is not for the betterment of humankind we will have such a fucked up world with some people desperately unrehearsed that the rest of us can forget it.

( See previous posts: Re the need to give all technology a bill of health)

All comments welcome. All like clicks chucked in the bin.