Rensselaer is America’s oldest technological research university, offering bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees in engineering, the sciences, information technology and web science, architecture, management, and the humanities, arts, and social sciences.

The university offers degrees from five schools: Engineering; Science; Architecture; Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences; and the Lally School of Management; as well as an interdisciplinary degree in Information Technology and Web Science.

Rensselaer offers more than 145 programs at the bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral levels. Students are encouraged to work in interdisciplinary programs that allow them to combine scholarly work from several departments or schools. The university provides rigorous, engaging, interactive learning environments and campus-wide opportunities for leadership, collaboration, and creativity.

Driven by talented, dedicated, and forward-thinking faculty, Rensselaer has dramatically expanded the research enterprise by leveraging our existing strengths and focusing on five signature research areas: biotechnology and the life sciences; energy and the environment; computational science and engineering; nanotechnology and advanced materials; and media, arts, science, and technology.

The Institute is especially well-known for its success in the transfer of technology from the laboratory to the marketplace so that new discoveries and inventions benefit human life, protect the environment, and strengthen economic development.

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

New Row

Contact expert @[Full Name](fullname), @[Job Title](job_title) at @[Organization](organization) for media, speaking, professional opportunities and more.

@[Full Name](fullname) at @[Organization](organization) | Contact Form

Expert Inquiry

Open Sans

Elected Fellow of the British Computer Society (BCS)

Covey Award, from the International Association for Computing and Philosophy, for “Excellence in the Area of Research in Computing and Philosophy”

IBM Faculty Fellow Award

Annual Rensselaer Trustees Celebration of Faculty Achievement

Undergraduate Research Program Mentor Award

Best Paper Award for “Provability Based Semantic Interoperability"

Best Paper Award from GameOn2005

American Philosophical Association

American Association for Artificial Intelligence

Association for Symbolic Logic

Society for Machines and Mentality (past President)

Cognitive Science Society

Beyond the Doctrine of Double Effect: A Formal Model of True Self-sacrifice

Toward the Engineering of Virtuous Machines

Tentacular Artificial Intelligence, and the Architecture Thereof, Introduced

ments be thrown to the wind - in light of the fact that careful, precise, step-by-step deductive arguments will be presented below for each and every proposition that might be cavalierly regarded prima facie implausible. Key Theses So, to put it colloquially, I think we're headed toward real­ izing Blade Runner, a classic sci fi movie in which only an elaborate pupil-scanner (which detects the usual physiolog­ ical correlate to an emotional response to provocative ques­ tions) enables one to distinguish androids from humans. And Blade Runner turned real, it seems to me, will be the Age of The Philosopher. Qualia Scanner Pupils undilated! Why? Well, to start, this will be an era within which the so-called "problem of other minds" will be especially pointed, because the sort of question frequently posed by in­ structors in introductory philosophy courses, namely How do you know, really know, that the person next to you isn't just a robot, that underneath her "skull" hums a complicated silicon device instead of a flesh-and-blood human brain? WHAT ROBOTS CANANDCAN'TBE 4 will be a deadly serious one.

What Robots Can and Can't Be (Studies in Cognitive Systems)

This is the first book-length presentation and defense of a new theory of human and machine cognition, according to which human persons are superminds. Superminds are capable of processing information not only at and below the level of Turing machines (standard computers), but above that level (the "Turing Limit"), as information processing devices that have not yet been (and perhaps can never be) built, but have been mathematically specified; these devices are known as super-Turing machines or hypercomputers. Superminds, as explained herein, also have properties no machine, whether above or below the Turing Limit, can have. The present book is the third and pivotal volume in Bringsjord's supermind quartet; the first two books were What Robots Can and Can't Be (Kluwer) and AI and Literary Creativity (Lawrence Erlbaum). The final chapter of this book offers eight prescriptions for the concrete practice of AI and cognitive science in light of the fact that we are superminds.

Superminds: People Harness Hypercomputation, and More (Studies in Cognitive Systems)

Selmer Bringsjord specializes in the logico-mathematical and philosophical foundations of artificial intelligence (AI) and cognitive science, and in collaboratively building AI systems on the basis of computational logic. Though he spends considerable “engineering" time in pursuit of ever-smarter computing machines, he claims that “armchair" reasoning time has enabled him to deduce that the human mind will forever be superior to such machines.

"Soon enough, much of what many humans do for a living will be better done by indefatigable machines who require not a cent in pay,” Bringsjord said. “I figure the ultimate growth industry will be building smarter and smarter such machines on the one hand, and philosophizing about whether they are truly conscious and free on the other.  Job security is nice.  I've worked in this two-fold industry for a long time, and plan to continue as long as my health holds out."

Bringsjord is the author of papers and essays ranging in approach from the mathematical to the informal, and covering such areas as AI, logic, gaming, philosophy of mind, philosophy of religion, robotics, and ethics and he has of late begun to move into the area of computational economics, for which he has invented a new paradigm based on formal logic.

He is the author of What Robots Can & Can't Be, concerned with the future of attempts to create robots that behave as humans, and also Superminds: People Harness Hypercomputation, and More. Before the second of these books he wrote, with IBM's David Ferrucci, Articial Intelligence and Literary Creativity: Inside the Mind of Brutus, A Storytelling Machine.

Bringsjord currently holds appointments in the Department of Cognitive Science, the Department of Computer Science, and the Lally School of Management & Technology, and teaches AI, formal logic, human and machine reasoning, philosophy of AI, other topics relating to formal logic, and the intellectual history of New York City and the Hudson Valley. Funding for his research and development has come from the Luce Foundation, the National Science Foundation, the Templeton Foundation, AT&T, IBM, Apple, AFRL, ARDA/DTO/IARPA, ONR, DARPA, AFOSR, and other sponsors. Bringsjord has consulted to and advised many companies in the general realm of intelligent systems, and continues to do so.

Artifical Intelligence

Philosophical Foundations of AI

Computational Economics

AI Systems

Formal Logic

Computational Logic

Faculty Profile

ResearchGate Citations

How to Slow Down Time

Can AI Teach Us To Be More Human? Maybe.

Conciencia robótica: Sentir y razonar como humano

Ethical AI: Should Artificial Intelligence Be Used in Weapons

The Turing Test is Dead. Long Live the Lovelace Test.

When AI Goes Wrong, We Won’t Be Able to Ask It Why

Watch the moment when a really cute robot becomes self-aware

Robot homes in on consciousness by passing self-awareness test

AI researcher says amoral robots pose a danger to humanity

Forget Turing, the Lovelace Test Has a Better Shot at Spotting AI

What is a (computer) program?

Great Computational Intelligence, Mature and Further Applied.

Advanced Logicist Machine Learning (Phase 1)

could-smarter-guns-be-the-key-to-stopping-mass-shootings-and-other-violence-

Director, Rensselaer AI & Reasoning Lab; Professor, Cognitive Science and Computer Science

“Gun violence in this country is an epidemic, and it’s an international embarrassment,” President Biden recently said. At least 45 mass shootings have occurred in America in the last month, according to reports. In the same time period, news of police officers killing unarmed Black men and boys, including 20-year-old Daunte Wright in Minneapolis and 13-year-old Adam Toledo in Chicago, sparked waves of protest around the country. 

These all-too-common tragedies could be significantly reduced — and even eliminated — without any of the partisan rancor and gridlock typically associated with gun-related debates, says Selmer Bringsjord, an expert in artificial intelligence and reasoning and a professor of cognitive science at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

“There is a solution,” Bringsjord, the director of the Rensselaer AI and Reasoning Laboratory, wrote in the Times Union. “A technological alternative to the fruitless shouting match between politicians: namely, AI — of the ethical sort. Guns that are at once intelligent and ethically correct can put an end to the mass-shooting carnage.”

Rather than an endless debate over whether the public should have more guns or less, Bringsjord’s novel – and, he says, plausible – proposal is to shift to “smart and virtuous guns, and intelligent restraining devices that operate in accord with ethics, and the law.”

Along with his coauthors, Bringsjord detailed his ideas in a recent paper, “AI Can Stop Mass Shootings, and More.” Anticipating some counterarguments, the authors urge readers “to at least contemplate whether we are right, and whether, if we are, such AI is worth seeking.”

Bringsjord and his collaborators have created simulations showing how, in only 2.3 seconds, ethical AI technology can perceive a human’s intent and environment and then, if necessary, prevent their gun from firing. Importantly, he notes, the same technology that could prevent a criminal from opening fire in a public area could also prevent a police officer from shooting a person who posed no threat.

“Ultimately research along this line should enable humans, in particular some human police, to simply be replaced by machines that, as a matter of ironclad logic, cannot do wrong,” Bringsjord said in a recent public radio segment. 

The AI capabilities discussed by Bringsjord are the product of prior work over seven years of funding from the Office of Naval Research devoted to developing moral competence in robots.

Bringsjord has spoken about robots and logic at TEDxLimassol. He is the author of What Robots Can and Can’t Be and Superminds: People Harness Hypercomputation. He is also the co-author of Artificial Intelligence and Literary Creativity: Inside the Mind of Brutus, a Storytelling Machine.

Bringsjord is available to speak about his recent proposals around AI-enabled guns, as well as other aspects of AI, human and machine reasoning, and formal logic.




Could Smarter Guns Be the Key To Stopping Mass Shootings and Other Violence? 

the-gun-control-debate-is-at-a-stalemate-can-smarter-weapons-help-to-solve-it

The gun control debate is at a stalemate. America seems incapable of finding common ground on background checks, waiting periods, weapons registries and restrictions or bans on select weapons. Shooting after shooting has resulted in decades of debate but little substantive change. But Professor Selmer Bringsjord from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, who recently weighed in on the issue, presented a concept that could turn the entire topic on its head by using artificial intelligence.

Bringsjord accepts that America won’t get rid of its guns – so why not just make our guns smarter?  Ethically AI-enabled weapons can put American politicians back to work by shifting the debate from the weapons we should ban, to the targets we will accept. Do we allow guns to kill school children, shoppers, concert-goers? The technology of ethical AI changes the conversation.    His idea was just recently published in the Times Union: “Yet there is a solution, a technological alternative to the fruitless shouting match between politicians: namely, AI — of an ethical sort. Guns that are at once intelligent and ethically correct can put an end to the mass-shooting carnage.  Consider the rifle apparently used by the human killer in the El Paso Walmart shooting. But now suppose that time is turned back to before his shots were fired on Aug. 3, and that his rifle, radically unlike the stupid one that killed, is both intelligent and ethical. This alternate-future rifle would know that it's approaching the Walmart by car and would accordingly know that it has no business being used anytime soon. Move forward in time a bit; the rifle is now in the hands of the aspiring, ear-muffed killer outside his car; but his weapon has fully disengaged itself and is locked into a mode of utter uselessness with the finality of a sealed bank vault. On the other hand, the guns in the hands of law enforcement officers who have dashed on scene know in whose hands they rest, and accordingly know that if they are trained on the would-be killer, they have every right to work well, if this criminal reveals some new threat.  Notice: If people who don't actually pose a threat sufficient to warrant being shot by police can't be shot by smart, ethical guns, a fact that could lead to the welcome evaporation of a different but also vitriolic political shouting match.” -Times Union, August 16, 2019  Could AI be the answer to America’s gun problem? It’s truly a new perspective on an old issue. If you are a reporter covering this topic, let our experts help with your story. Dr. Selmer Bringsjord is the Chair of the Department of Cognitive Science expert in logic and philosophy, specializing in AI and reasoning. Dr. Bringsjord regularly speaks with media about AI and is available to speak about the concept of intelligent, ethical guns. Simply click on his icon to arrange an interview.    

The Gun Control Debate is at a Stalemate. Can Smarter Weapons Help to Solve it?

Could a robot ever be a hero?  No, despite the fact that we will expect our robots (in fact, even our soon-to-arrive self-driving cars) to sacrifice themselves for us.

"Soon enough, much of what many humans do for a living will be better done by indefatigable machines who require not a cent in pay,” Bringsjord said. “I figure the ultimate growth industry will be building smarter and smarter such machines on the one hand, and philosophizing about whether they are truly conscious and free on the other.  Job security is nice.  I've worked in this two-fold industry for a long time, and plan to continue as long as my health holds out."


http://www.rpi.edu/~brings
http://rair.cogsci.rpi.edu


Selmer Bringsjord specializes in the logico-mathematical and philosophical foundations  of artifical intelligence (AI) and cognitive science (CogSci), and in collaboratively building AI systems on the basis of computational logic.  Though he spends considerable engineering time in pursuit of ever-smarter computing machines, he claims that ""armchair"" reasoning time has enabled him to deduce that the human mind will forever be superior to such machines.
In the present case, this superiority entails that robot can't be heroes, while persons can.


This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at http://ted.com/tedx

Could a Robot Be a Bona Fide Hero? | Prof. Selmer Bringsjord | TEDxLimassol

Select Inquiry Type