Is Artificial Intelligence Emergent?

On page 628 of Stephen Wolfram’s A New Kind of Science, he states:
There has in the past been a great tendency to assume that given all its apparent complexity, human thinking must somehow be an altogether fundamentally complex process, not amenable at any level to simple explanation or meaningful theory.
But from the discoveries in this [...]

NKS Reference – xkcd Comic, “A Bunch of Rocks”

Thanks to Randall at xkcd for a beautifully-composed comic:
What you can’t see from the embedding is the original scrollover from the xkcd site: “I call Rule 34 on Wolfram’s Rule 34.”
Now, for all of you who don’t know, here’s the Urban Dictionary definition of calling “Rule 34″
Given all this, what is your take of the [...]

NKS Midwest Conference – final days

Saturday was all talks by invited speakers. I found Gregory Chaitin’s talk the most energizing. I took copious notes for my personal satisfaction. Though I would like to concentrate on experimental computer science — like modeling — in my future research, I would like to learn some theory of computation purely for my own enjoyment.
I [...]

NKS Midwest Conference – the first day

Forgive the delay, I’ve been a bit swamped since my return from the conference. Here are my notes and observations on the first-session talks on the first day of the conference, Friday October 31:
FRANCIS BITONTI – “Unnatural Selection”
Frank works as an instructor at the Pratt Institute, and is a firm believer in using NKS and [...]

2008 Midwest NKS Conference – Francis Bitonti

So the first day of the conference went well. I attended the morning session, though had to miss the afternoon session to run necessary errands and do some things for the company. I’ll summarize a few of the talks to which I went, as well as the great movie about Julia Robinson we watched later [...]