The Book of Minds: How to Understand Ourselves and Other Beings, from Animals to AI to Aliens

The Book of Minds: How to Understand Ourselves and Other Beings, from Animals to AI to Aliens by Philip Ball

This book takes a long balanced exploration of the mind, sentience and freewill. What does separate humans from other animals? Do we have freewill? What does the mind do? Where does artificial intelligence fit into this? There are more questions than answers. For AI, it does seem that it is great at analyzing patterns and making logical responses, but this does still seem a far cry from the true intelligence. It also requires vastly greater computing power. Can we really attempt to have a single measure for intelligence? Computer are great at solving certain types of problems. Different animals are great at computing what they need to compute. Bees have a jiggle dance that shows others where to go, birds fly, animals identify prey. They all have intelligence optimized for their purpose. They all process the environment in different ways, with differing sensitivities to smell, colors and more. We have a tendency to try to anthropomorphize, but we can learn a lot from others. As for freewill? As far as human interaction is concerned, it doesn't really matter, the law will still need to act the same. It will also be difficult to come to a definitive conclusion. Similarly with extraterrestrials. Are we a backwater not worth exploring? Or perhaps we are so different that we don't realize we have been in contact. There is likely more diversity in minds than we can comprehend.