Roger Penrose - The Emperor's New Mind

Roger Penrose - The Emperor's New Mind

Some love it, some hate it, but The Emperor's New Mind, physicist Roger Penrose's 1989 treatise attacking the foundations of strong artificial intelligence, is crucial for anyone interested in the history of thinking about AI and consciousness. Part survey of modern physics, part exploration of the philosophy of mind, the book is not for casual readers--though it's not overly technical, it rarely pauses to let the reader catch a breath. The overview of relativity and quantum theory, written by a master, is priceless and uncontroversial. The exploration of consciousness and AI, though, is generally considered as resting on shakier ground.

Penrose claims that there is an intimate, perhaps unknowable relation between quantum effects and our thinking, and ultimately derives his anti-AI stance from his proposition that some, if not all, of our thinking is non-algorithmic. Of course, these days we believe that there are other avenues to AI than traditional algorithmic programming; while he has been accused of setting up straw robots to knock down, this accusation is unfair. Little was then known about the power of neural networks and behavior-based robotics to simulate (and, some would say, produce) intelligent problem-solving behavior. Whether these tools will lead to strong AI is ultimately a question of belief, not proof, and The Emperor's New Mind offers powerful arguments useful to believer and nonbeliever alike.

"Many mathematicians working in computer science propose that it will soon be possible to build computers capable of artificial intelligence, machines that could equal or excel the thought processes of the human mind. Roger Penrose, who teaches mathematics at the University of Oxford, begs to differ. He thinks that what goes on in the human mind - and in the minds of apes and dolphins for that matter - is very different from the workings of any existing or imaginable computer.

In "The Emperor's New Mind", a bold, brilliant, ground breaking work, he argues that we lack a fundamentally important insight into physics, without which we will never be able to comprehend the mind. Moreover, he suggests, this insight may be the same one that will be required before we can write a unified theory of everything.

"This is an astonishing claim, one that the critical reader might be tempted to dismiss out of hand were it broached by a thinker of lesser stature. But Mr. Penrose is a gifted mathematician with an impressive record of lighting lamps that have helped guide physics on its way. His research with Stephen Hawking aided in establishing the plausibility of black holes, and brought new insights into the physics of the big bang with which the expansion of the universe is thought to have begun... When Mr. Penrose talks, scientists listen."

File: Roger Penrose - The Emperor's New Mind.pdf