History and Ongoing Development of A.I., Philosophical as well as Nuts-and-bolts.

[Johnnycomelately]

Welcome to this focus on the aspects of the history and ongoing development of the spectre of A.I. It is intended to fill in some gaps in the presentation of the subject, between the several current pillar threads. “Philosophical” is obvs, but “Development” is meant as shop-floor understanding, not performance results like in John K’s thread A.I. is Progressing Faster Than You Think! https://projectavalon.net/forum4/sho...han-You-Think-

First post leans heavily philosophical. 1998, an onstage discussion of their perceived essence and future of A.I., between Terence McKenna, Rupert Sheldrake, and Ralph Abraham.

L =42:37.

Superintelligent AI ... The Weirdest Guest at the Dinner Party

Rupert Sheldrake

146K subscribers

Nov 21, 2025

In 1998, my friends Terence McKenna, Ralph Abraham and I sat down at the University of California, Santa Cruz to explore how machine intelligence might evolve in relation to our own. At that time, the internet was still young, and artificial intelligence belonged mostly to science fiction. Yet many of the questions we raised then have become part of daily life.

In this conversation, we explore whether intelligence is best understood as logic and computation, or as something embodied, participatory, and alive. Can the mind be reduced to code, or does life itself depend on forms of knowing that no algorithm can contain?

Artificial systems now outpace us in speed, reach, and memory. Yet the deeper mystery is not how far they can go, but what they reveal about mind and ourselves. Will machine intelligence reproduce the limitations of our mechanistic worldview, or might it help us rediscover dimensions of mind that transcend machinery altogether?

Looking back, it's striking how near we now are to the possibilities we once only speculated about. Quantum computing, self-learning systems, large language models very much as Terence describes—and the looming prospect of superintelligence—have moved from the margins to the mainstream. But the heart of the conversation remains just as relevant today, if not more so: what is consciousness, and how might we participate in its unfolding evolution?

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=SLUcDfupDaA