Artificial Philosophy

In Signal Beyond Speech, A. J. Salara invites listeners into a provocative inquiry at the edge of consciousness, cognition, and communication. This is not a book about artificial intelligence in the usual sense—it is a philosophical reflection on the nature of intelligence itself, and the possibility of perceiving it beyond the limits of symbols, syntax, and structured language.

Artificial intelligence powers Google's search engine, enables Facebook to target advertising, and allows Alexa and Siri to do their jobs. AI is also behind self-driving cars, predictive policing, and autonomous weapons that can kill without human intervention. These and other AI applications raise complex ethical issues that are the subject of ongoing debate. This volume in the MIT Press Essential Knowledge series offers an accessible synthesis of these issues.

Artificial intelligence can answer almost anything. The tragedy is that people have nothing to ask. Surrounded by infinite knowledge, we shrink our curiosity to absurdities: “Do you have legs?” This book is about that paradox. Not about machines, but about us—about how to learn again, how to build methods of thinking, how to cultivate curiosity before it disappears.

This book presents a timely and significant addition to the ongoing discourse around the ethical implications of AI in general, as well as the new and disruptive AI technologies, such as generative AI platforms like ChatGPT.