Biography:Susan Schneider

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Susan Lynn Schneider[1]
woman in chair gesturing,
Schneider on AI panel, 2019
NationalityAmerican
OccupationPhilosopher
Academic background
EducationUniversity of California, Berkeley
Rutgers University
Doctoral advisorJerry Fodor
Academic work
InstitutionsMoravian College
University of Pennsylvania
Library of Congress
University of Connecticut
Florida Atlantic University
Websiteschneiderwebsite.com


Susan Lynn Schneider is an American academic and public philosopher. She is the founding director of the Center for the Future Mind at Florida Atlantic University where she also holds the William F. Dietrich Distinguished Professorship.[1] Schneider has also held the Baruch S. Blumberg NASA/Library of Congress Chair in Astrobiology, Exploration, and Scientific Innovation at NASA and the Distinguished Scholar Chair at the Library of Congress.

Education

Schneider graduated from University of California, Berkeley in 1993 with a B.A. (honors) in Economics. She then went to Rutgers University[2][3] where she worked with Jerry Fodor,[4] graduating with a Ph.D. in Philosophy in 2003.[2][3]

Career

Schneider taught at Moravian College as an assistant professor of philosophy from 2003–2006. She was an assistant professor of philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania from 2006-2012.[5][3] She became an associate professor of philosophy and cognitive science at the University of Connecticut in 2012 where she was the founding director of the group for AI, Mind and Society ("AIMS").[6] In addition she has done research at the Australian National University (2013),[7][3] the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey (2016-2017)[8] and at the Yale Interdisciplinary Center for Bioethics at Yale University (2015-2019)[7][3]

At the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. she has held the Distinguished Scholar chair (January–June 2019)[9] and the Baruch S. Blumburg NASA Chair in Astrobiology, Exploration and Technological innovation (October 2019-).[10] In 2020, Schneider accepted the position of William F. Dietrich Professor of Philosophy at Florida Atlantic University (FAU), jointly appointed to the FAU Brain Institute.[11][12]

Philosophy of mind

Schneider writes about the philosophical nature of the mind and self, drawing on and addressing issues from philosophy of mind, cognitive science, artificial intelligence, ethics, metaphysics, and astrobiology.[9] Topics include the nature of life, the nature of persons, what minds have in common with programs, radical brain enhancement, superintelligence, panpsychism, and emergent spacetime.[13][9][14]

Artificial Intelligence

In her book Artificial You: AI and the Future of Your Mind, Schneider discusses different theories of artificial intelligence (AI) and consciousness, and speculates about the ethical, philosophical, and scientific implications of AI for humanity.[15] She argues that AI will inevitably change our understanding of intelligence, and may also change us in ways that we do not anticipate, intend, or desire. She advocates for a cautious and thoughtful approach to transhumanism. She emphasizes that people must make careful choices to ensure that sentient beings - whether human or android - flourish.[16][17] Using AI technology to reshape the human brain or to build machine minds, will mean experimenting with "tools" that we do not understand how to use: the mind, the self, and consciousness. Schneider argues that failing to understand fundamental philosophical issues will jeopardize the beneficial use of AI and brain enhancement technology, and may lead to the suffering or death of conscious beings. To flourish, humans must address the philosophical issues underlying the AI algorithms.[18][19][20][16]

In her work on the mind-body problem, she argues against physicalism, maintaining a monistic position and offering, in a series of papers, several novel anti-physicalist arguments.[21][22][23]

In the domain of astrobiology, Schneider contends that the most intelligent alien beings we encounter will be "postbiological in nature", being forms of artificial intelligence, that they would be superintelligent, and that we can predict what the shape of some of these superintelligences would be like.[13][24] Her reason for the claim that the most intelligent aliens will be "postbiological" is called the "short window observation." The short-window supposition holds that by the time any society learns to transmit radio signals, they're likely just a few hundred years from upgrading their own biology.[13]

In an earlier technical book on the computational nature of the brain with MIT Press, The Language of Thought: a New Philosophical Direction (2011), Schneider examines the viability of different computational theories of thinking. Expanding on the work of Jerry Fodor, with whom she had studied, she suggests revisions to the symbol processing approach known as the "language of thought hypothesis" (LOTH) or "language of thought" (LOT).[25] Drawing on both computational neuroscience and cognitive psychology, Scheider argues that the brain may be a hybrid computational system.[9] She defends a view in which mental symbols are the basic vocabulary items composing the language of thought. She then uses this conception of symbols, together with certain work on the nature of meaning, to construct a theory of the nature of concepts.[26][27][4] The basic theory of concepts is intended to be ecumenical, having a version that applies in the case of connectionism, as well as versions that apply to both the prototype theory and definitions view of concepts.[4]

Public philosophy

Schneider is active as a public philosopher,[12][28] who believes that individuals, not companies, need to be considering and deciding the philosophical issues that will affect them personally, socially, and culturally as a result of artificial intelligence.[9] She writes opinion pieces for venues such as the New York Times,[29][30] The Financial Times[31] and Scientific American.[32][33][28]

Her work has been mentioned by numerous publications including The New York Times , Wired Magazine, Smithsonian, Discover Magazine, Science Magazine, Slate, Motherboard, Big Think, Inverse, and Nautilus.[28][34][35][36][37][38][39]

Schneider has been featured on television shows on BBC World News,[16] The History Channel, Fox News, PBS, and the National Geographic Channel,[28] and appears in the feature film, Supersapiens: the Rise of the Mind by Markus Mooslechner.[40][41]

Books

  • (with Max Velmans, eds.), The Blackwell Companion to Consciousness, Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2006. ISBN:9780470674079[7]
  • Science Fiction and Philosophy, Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009. ISBN:9781118922613[7]
  • The Language of Thought: a New Philosophical Direction, MIT Press, 2011. ISBN:9780262527453[7]
  • Artificial You: AI and the Future of Your Mind, Princeton University Press, 2019. ISBN:9780691180144[19]

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 "Public Scholars 2018" (in en). https://www.neh.gov/divisions/research/grant-news/public-scholars-2018. 
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 "Advisory Board: Dr. Susan Schneider". https://lifeboat.com/ex/bios.susan.schneider. 
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 "SUSAN SCHNEIDER". http://www.fau.edu/artsandletters/philosophy/pdf/susan-schneider-cv.pdf. 
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 Figdor, Carrie (August 15, 2011). "Susan Schneider, "The Language of Thought: A New Philosophical Direction" (MIT Press, 2011)". https://newbooksnetwork.com/susan-schneider-the-language-of-thought-a-new-philosophical-direction-mit-press-2011/. 
  5. ↑ "Susan Schneider, Ph.D.". https://www.nourfoundation.com/speakers/susan-schneider-phd.html. 
  6. ↑ Salisbury, Jenelle (2018-02-16). "Susan Schneider | AI, Mind and Society ("AIMS") Group" (in en-US). https://mindandbrain.uconn.edu/person/susan-schneider/. 
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 7.3 7.4 "Susan Schneider Cognitive Philosopher". https://www.tedxcambridge.com/speaker/susan-schneider/. 
  8. ↑ "Susan Schneider". 9 December 2019. https://www.ias.edu/scholars/susan-schneider. 
  9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 9.2 9.3 9.4 "The Future of the Mind: How AI Technology Could Reshape the Human Mind and Create Alternate Synthetic Minds, A Conversation with Susan Schneider". January 28, 2019. https://www.edge.org/conversation/susan_schneider-the-future-of-the-mind. 
  10. ↑ "Baruch S. Blumberg NASA/Library of Congress Chair in Astrobiology, Exploration, and Scientific Innovation". https://www.loc.gov/programs/john-w-kluge-center/chairs-fellowships/chairs/blumberg-nasa-chair-in-astrobiology/. 
  11. ↑ Burks, Polly (July 14, 2020). "FAU Hires Leading Philosopher and Futurist". https://www.fau.edu/newsdesk/articles/susanschneider.php. 
  12. ↑ 12.0 12.1 Weinberg, Justin (2020-07-17). "Schneider from Connecticut to Florida Atlantic" (in en-US). https://dailynous.com/2020/07/17/schneider-connecticut-florida-atlantic/. 
  13. ↑ 13.0 13.1 13.2 Stone, Maddie (2014-12-19). "The Dominant Life Form in the Cosmos Is Probably Superintelligent Robots". Vice. http://motherboard.vice.com/read/the-dominant-life-form-in-the-cosmos-is-probably-superintelligent-robots. 
  14. ↑ Kastrup, Bernardo. "Idealism and Emergent Spacetime". https://www.scienceandnonduality.com/article/idealism-and-emergent-spacetime. 
  15. ↑ Dickson, Ben (August 5, 2020). "The complicated world of AI consciousness". TechTalks. https://bdtechtalks.com/2020/08/05/artificial-you-susan-schneider/. 
  16. ↑ 16.0 16.1 16.2 (in en) Schneider BBC World News America 10 1 19, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XDYFaDMpfdY, retrieved 2019-10-23 
  17. ↑ Turello, Dan (October 2019). "Will AI Become Conscious? A Conversation with Susan Schneider October 1, 2019". https://blogs.loc.gov/kluge/2019/10/will-ai-become-conscious-a-conversation-with-susan-schneider/. 
  18. ↑ Moring, Mark (2019-10-01). "Your Brain, AI, and the Future" (in en-US). https://orbitermag.com/your-brain-ai-and-the-future/. 
  19. ↑ 19.0 19.1 "Deletable You: Scott McLemee reviews Susan Schneider's Artificial You: AI and the Future of Your Mind" (in en). October 18, 2019. https://www.insidehighered.com/views/2019/10/18/review-susan-schneider-artificial-you-ai-and-future-your-mind. 
  20. ↑ Cocking, Simon (October 10, 2019). "Artificial You, AI And The Future of Your Mind, October, 2019, reviewed" (in en-US). https://irishtechnews.ie/artificial-you-ai-and-the-future-of-your-mind/. 
  21. ↑ Goff, P. (2017). "Is it a Problem that Physics is Mathematical?" (in en). Journal of Consciousness Studies 24 (9): 50–58. https://www.imprint.co.uk/is-it-a-problem-that-physics-is-mathematical/. Retrieved 31 August 2020. 
  22. ↑ Montero, B. G. (2017). "Should Physicalists Fear Abstracta?" (in en). Journal of Consciousness Studies 24 (9–10): 40–49. https://www.ingentaconnect.com/contentone/imp/jcs/2017/00000024/f0020009/art00002;jsessionid=41ec4yz3i0rf.x-ic-live-01. Retrieved 2019-10-23. 
  23. ↑ Vision, G. (2017). "On Physics' Faustian Bargain with Mathematics" (in en). Journal of Consciousness Studies 24 (9–10): 59–71. https://www.ingentaconnect.com/contentone/imp/jcs/2017/00000024/f0020009/art00004. Retrieved 2019-10-23. 
  24. ↑ Dick, Steven J. (October 26, 2015). The Impact of Discovering Life Beyond Earth. Cambridge University Press. p. 156. 
  25. ↑ Rescorla, Michael (May 28, 2019). "The Language of Thought Hypothesis". https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/language-thought/. 
  26. ↑ Sprevak, Mark (1 April 2019). "The Language of Thought: A New Philosophical Direction, by Susan Schneider". Mind 128 (510): 555–564. doi:10.1093/mind/fzy031. https://academic.oup.com/mind/article-abstract/128/510/555/5078549. Retrieved 31 August 2020. 
  27. ↑ Rupert, Robert D. (2008-03-01). "Frege's puzzle and Frege cases: Defending a quasi-syntactic solution". Cognitive Systems Research. Perspectives on Social Cognition 9 (1–2): 76–91. doi:10.1016/j.cogsys.2007.07.003. 
  28. ↑ 28.0 28.1 28.2 28.3 "Articles, TV Interviews, Lectures and Podcasts". https://schneiderwebsite.com/media.html. 
  29. ↑ Schneider, Susan (2019-06-10). "Opinion | Should You Add a Microchip to Your Brain?" (in en-US). The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/10/opinion/future-artificial-intelligence-transhumanism.html. 
  30. ↑ "Susan Schneider - Opinionator - The New York Times" (in en). https://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/author/susan-schneider/. 
  31. ↑ "Merging with AI would be suicide for the human mind (Subscribe to read)" (in en-GB). 13 August 2019. https://www.ft.com/content/0c4fac58-bd15-11e9-9381-78bab8a70848. 
  32. ↑ Schneider, Susan. "Spacetime Emergence, Panpsychism and the Nature of Consciousness" (in en). https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/spacetime-emergence-panpsychism-and-the-nature-of-consciousness/. 
  33. ↑ "Susan Schneider". https://muckrack.com/susan-schneider/articles. 
  34. ↑ "I Compute, Therefore I Am - Science Not Fiction". October 22, 2009. http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/sciencenotfiction/2009/10/22/i-compute-therefore-i-am/. 
  35. ↑ "La forme dominante de vie dans le cosmos est probablement celle de super robots" (in fr). 2014-12-21. http://www.slate.fr/story/96053/vie-cosmos-extraterrestre-probablement-super-robots. 
  36. ↑ Schneider, Susan (2019-10-23). "Conscious machines: How will we test artificial intelligence for feeling?" (in en). https://bigthink.com/videos/susan-schneider-artificial-intelligence. 
  37. ↑ Little, Cole (2016-06-22). "Would You Have Any Cosmetic Neurology Done?". http://nautil.us/blog/would-you-have-any-cosmetic-neurology-done. 
  38. ↑ "Can Humanism Survive the Coming Transhumanist Revolution?". 27 August 2014. http://thehumanist.com/magazine/september-october-2014/features/can-humanism-survive-the-coming-transhumanist-revolution. 
  39. ↑ "Mind & Self in the Transhumanist Age". 27 August 2014. http://thehumanist.com/features/interviews/mind-self-in-the-transhumanist-age. 
  40. ↑ Smerd, Georgina (May 20, 2018). "Film Review: SuperSapiens SuperSapiens will leave its audience in contemplation about humankind's future and what sort of world we may be creating". https://glamadelaide.com.au/film-review-supersapiens/. 
  41. ↑ "Supersapiens, the Rise of the Mind". July 21, 2017. https://www.kurzweilai.net/supersapiens-the-rise-of-the-mind. 

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