Books by Pietro Perconti
Quante volte saremmo voluti entrare nella testa delle altre persone per sapere cosa pensano e che... more Quante volte saremmo voluti entrare nella testa delle altre persone per sapere cosa pensano e che intenzioni hanno? Penetrare nelle menti altrui è quanto di più prezioso possiamo imparare a fare. Eppure sappiamo poco della logica di questa operazione. Leggere le menti non è questione di telepatia. Si tratta piuttosto di esercitare una sofisticata capacità di interpretazione dei comportamenti e delle situazioni in cui essi hanno luogo. Il libro illustra alcune regole a cui obbedisce l'esercizio di questa capacità.
Papers by Pietro Perconti
Embodiment has become mainstream cognitive science, and has brought several important theoretical... more Embodiment has become mainstream cognitive science, and has brought several important theoretical and empirical advances. Some embodied cognitive scientists have argued that cognition based on action and bodily states is incommensurate with the standard representationalist and computational approach. Often the case of visual perception is used as the best example for this thesis. In the recent years, the family of algorithms collected under the name “deep learning” has revolutionized artificial intelligence, enabling machines to reach human–like performances in many complex cognitive tasks, especially in vision. Such results are achieved by learning on collections of static images, therefore neglecting actions, dependency on time, and any form of interaction with the environment. Deep learning models were developed with engineering goals in mind, and advancing cognitive science is not in the agenda of this research community. Still, the achievements of deep learning in the case of v...
Lecture Notes in Morphogenesis, 2017
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this p... more The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
Journal of Artificial Intelligence and Consciousness
The adventure of artificial intelligence (AI) is based on a revolutionary idea, namely, that mach... more The adventure of artificial intelligence (AI) is based on a revolutionary idea, namely, that machines are able to understand and produce linguistic acts endowed with meaning. Over the past decades, this idea has gained acceptance in the scientific community, but its consequences for human nature were not really appreciated. Recent developments in AI, due especially to Deep Learning (DL), have changed things dramatically by creating computer architectures capable of performing previously impossible tasks in areas such as image recognition and language understanding. Criticisms that were raised decades ago against this possibility have thus been revived. These criticisms are no different in argument from those made in the first place. The reason they are being raised again is because of the social impact that the new machine performances have been able to achieve, and is not driven by truly scientific reasons, which indeed prove to be inadequate when compared to the more recent artifi...
Perception
The Sense of Ownership (SoO) and the Sense of Agency (SoA) are two key components of bodily self-... more The Sense of Ownership (SoO) and the Sense of Agency (SoA) are two key components of bodily self-consciousness. In this experiment, we investigated how they are affected by variations in the ecological validity of the moving Rubber Hand Illusion (mRHI) paradigm, which typically include three movement conditions: active congruent, passive congruent, and active incongruent. These conditions were either in a session in which no auditory feedback associated with finger-tapping was eliminated, or in a session in which such a feedback occurred. Since the presence of the auditory feedback more closely corresponds to what individuals experience in daily life when they tap their finger on a surface, sessions with feedback are more ecologically valid, and should thus result in a more marked SoO. Results indicated that in the active movement condition in which the illusion is typically found (congruent), the effect was enhanced when the feedback was present. This advantage emerged on both on o...
Frontiers in Psychology, Apr 19, 2022
The Future of the Artificial Mind, 2022
Over the last decades, cognitive science has gained tremendous prestige. Thanks to it, the way we... more Over the last decades, cognitive science has gained tremendous prestige. Thanks to it, the way we live our daily lives is changing once again. Jobs are changing as they are increasingly influenced by the ability to process digital information and are increasingly dependent on automation and robotics. Our psychological abilities are also becoming more powerful thanks to a number of new cognitive prostheses, including mobile phones and social media. Thanks to achievements in the field of autonomous driving, we can hope that traffic in our cities will one day be a completely safe experience. These are just a few of the areas where everyday life is changing at an accelerating pace due to the pressures of cognitive science. After the first turbulent decades, in which the initial leadership of computer science was gradually disputed by linguistics, philosophy and psychology, neuroscience prevailed in the end. Thus, to this day, it is the brain sciences that have taken the lead role for cognitive science. From the Decade of the Brain (1990–2000) to the major projects simulating brain function, such as the Brain Activity Map Project and Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN), the scientific community felt it could finally decipher the inside of the “black box” and thus simulate its functioning. The prospects for rehabilitation, for cognitive enhancement, and for artificial intelligence modelled on the neurocognitive architecture of the human brain sounded very promising. However, things did not turn out quite as expected. The neuroscience discoveries were undoubtedly very significant, but did not quite live up to expectations. In the meantime, artificial intelligence has experienced something of a new renaissance. Ironically, this renaissance has not come about—as one might have expected—through the implementation of human-like cognitive architectures, but thanks to the mathematical sophistication that has enabled the surprising results of Deep Learning techniques. The impressive development of these techniques was initially driven by engineering purposes, but their application to cognitive processes proved to be extremely productive. After a period of stagnation that lasted a couple of decades, machines have again begun to surpass the cognitive abilities of humans. Artificial intelligence is now back to reclaim its role as the hegemonic discipline in the conflicting landscape of contemporary cognitive science. Where will this lead? This book attempts to provide an answer to this question by summarising recent achievements from the various fields that make up cognitive science, with a particular focus on the challenges of the artificial mind. There are still many areas where there are more questions than answers, such as concerns about killer robots, sexbots, and the ethical algorithms in self-driving cars. Artificial intelligence promises to improve our capabilities and contribute to a more prosperous and fairer society. To achieve these goals, however, it is important to guess the trajectory the future of the artificial mind will take. This is precisely what the following path is about.:
The Future of the Artificial Mind, 2022
World-Systems Evolution and Global Futures, 2020
Singularity is a very intriguing future scenario to fantasticate upon, but it is even a quite con... more Singularity is a very intriguing future scenario to fantasticate upon, but it is even a quite controversial theoretical issue. Turning back to our previous (Plebe and Perconti 2013) skepticism about the singularity hypothesis, based on an alternative slowdown hypothesis for artificial intelligence (AI), we consider the new possibilities of the so-called AI Renaissance and the opportunities provided by the techniques collected under the name of deep learning in order to suggest a “pluralistic” view on singularity. Plurality refers to the two following AI features: the compositionality of its subdomains and the spreading of intelligence in the social environment. We can suppose a new kind of singularity in the case of intelligence, due to both the emergentist nature of compositionality of subdomains and the “bearer problem,” i.e., the detachment between intentional content and its producer in a future scenario characterized by a massive spreading of intelligence in smart devices and the Internet. This kind of singularity for intelligence, however, could lead toward a “broken intelligence,” that is, an intelligence without anyone owns or uses it, more than toward the usually supposed “superintelligence.”
The Future of the Artificial Mind, 2022
Frontiers in Psychology, 2021
We investigated the impact of exposure to literary and popular fiction on psychological essential... more We investigated the impact of exposure to literary and popular fiction on psychological essentialism. Exposure to fiction was measured by using the Author Recognition Test, which allows us to separate exposure to authors of literary and popular fiction. Psychological essentialism was assessed by the discreteness subscale of the psychological essentialism scale in Study 1, and by the three subscales of the same scale (such as discreteness, informativeness, and biological basis) in Study 2 that was pre-registered. Results showed that exposure to literary fiction negatively predicts the three subscales. The results emerged controlling for political ideology, a variable that is commonly associated with psychological essentialism, and level of education.
The Future of the Artificial Mind, 2022
The Future of the Artificial Mind, 2022
The Future of the Artificial Mind, 2022
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Books by Pietro Perconti
Papers by Pietro Perconti