This seems to an article written by a philosophical type who doesn't really understand contemporary AI from a technical point of view. I'm not sure it's terribly useful.
“I did a PhD in artificial intelligence at MIT. My undergraduate degree was in math. I’ve also studied cognitive science, biochemistry, Old English and Ancient Greek literature. None of that qualifies me to write Meaningness, but it may explain a certain STEM-ish orientation, decorated with occasional literary jokes. ...
I have founded, managed, grown, and sold a successful biotech informatics company. That may explain a certain practical orientation, and lack of interest in philosophical theories that depend on the world being very unlike the way it appears.”
I expected better insights from a person who has a PhD in AI and spans multiple other fields. I think there is a gap between philosophy and AI, and philosophy has a lot of catching up to do. I'm especially looking at the "hard problem" and "qualia". In the meantime AI people implemented a lot of the activities of the mind and philosophers are still stuck on these toy concepts that don't go so far. Instead, they should focus on the implications of agent-environment learning - reinforcement learning and evolutionary strategies - as the true sources of human intelligence.
the site this blog is hosted on is really great for explaining a lot of aspects of postmodernism to engineering-oriented or analytical thinkers. i got totally sucked in by it over my christmas vacation two years ago and read the whole thing.
