This text is part of the text “Rebooting Humanity”

(The German Version can be found HERE)

Author No. 1 (Gerd Doeben-Henisch)

Contact: info@uffmm.org

(Last modified: June 14, 2024)

Starting Point

How can one philosophically conceive of artificial intelligence (AI) interacting with real people, an AI that learns real language with real meaning on its own? Prompted by an offer from Ars Electronica ’95 to introduce a philosophically inspired art project, I spent intense months with an ad hoc software team (the team was wonderful!) designing (and implemented by the software team) the interactive network version of a small artificial world based on philosophical considerations. In this world lived ‘blind Knowbots’ that could communicate with the outside world, using their other sensory experiences and basic bodily states as the basis for assigning meanings to their respective languages. Whatever language the users (mostly children!) used, they could link this language with their real-world experiences. This experiment has shaped me for many years, actually up to today.

Blind’s World One

(The text was copied from the Ars Electronica ’95 book since the text is no longer accessible)