The Limits Of Language And The Search For Understanding In Artificial Intelligence

The Limits of Language and the Search for Understanding in Artificial Intelligence

The development of artificial intelligence (AI) has led to remarkable advances in natural language processing (NLP), enabling machines to process human language with increasing sophistication. While this progress holds extraordinary promise for various applications, it also raises profound philosophical questions about meaning, sentience and understanding within language games. This paper delves into the intricate relationship and interplay between AI, language and meaning. It explores some of the philosophical underpinnings of language, examining how AI systems can extract, translate and manipulate semantically sensible content. It also investigates a few of the challenges of developing AI systems with the ability to ‘understand’ meaningful language that goes beyond surface semantic and syntactic proficiency.. The paper addresses the wider limits of logic and language for humans as well as for digital intelligence. By examining some of the philosophical and practical dimensions of meaning in AI NLP and LLM. The paper also seeks to encourage greater humility in how Homo sapiens define and approach the concept of intelligence. The author deprecates our historic excessive interspecies exceptionalism. The author makes no claims of original thoughts or research in the fields of philosophy of language, linguistics or the development of more generally applicable AI. The paper is intended to help specify the key issues using ordinary human readable language and to understand some of the main conceptual issues involved in the development of artificial general intelligence (AGI). Images stated as being by the author have been created using generative AI image creation tools. AI tools have also been used to advise on improvements to structure and on content.

Artificial Intelligence

Proceedings of the 10th Focus Conference (TFC 2023)

This is an open access book. The 2023 Focus Conference will focus on Goal Four (Quality Education) of the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SGD). Goal Four is seized with providing “equal access for all women and men to affordable and quality technical, vocational and tertiary education including university.” Quality education, in this context, means the ability to function, provide and derive value in society. The theme of the conference is therefore coined as “The Role of Higher Education in the Attainment of Sustainable Quality Education.” Through this theme, the conference will provide a space for participants to share practical knowledge, experiences, and possible solutions to the myriad of problems that confront the higher education sector. Universities are often thought of as ivory towers far removed from the realities that confront global societies. To compound this, higher education is increasingly being questioned for its relevance in providing practical and innovative solutions to existing societal problems. Such questions often navigate around the relevance of the academic programmes being offered, curriculum, the capacity of staff, employability of graduates, and generally the ability of these institutions to understand why they exist. Indeed, higher education’s role in creating a sustainable future will presumably take on greater importance as the world continues to become increasingly globalised and interdependent.