The Role of Artificial Intelligence in Epistemology

Introduction 

Earth has music for those who listen, and charm and the melody of the earth depends upon the contemporary times’ development. Invention of the computer has been revamping the world in a very new way and where artificial intelligence (AI) is bringing revolution for development. Wait a minute! Is AI real or not? Wow, this is a new Pandora of boxes that drag us in a situation where deducing the conclusion from AI myth/fact is a bit harder than can be imagined. AI has produced many questions, and still, those questions are not answered purely right form at this age of time like can machine think like a human?, will AI defeat human cognition capabilities? and does a machine learn from machine learning and deep learning? etc. Epistemology helps to explore the answer to these questions. Let’s first briefly explain the epistemology and role/interest of AI in epistemology for better intuitions. 

Epistemology 

Epistemology is a branch of science that deals with the theory of knowledge, human cognition, etc. It has helped a lot in the development of AI throughout history because it enables the man to think deep or beneath the surface, explore the answers in a new dimension, and it puts the newly discovered answers for open to discussion. In other words, epistemology gives the theory of AI knowl- edge in a domain of knowledge validity, scope, justified belief or opinions, etc. It is important in the sense that it delimits and defines the limitations of our cognition system for the development of AI. 

AI Interest in Epistemology 

AI shares interest in epistemology and some of that are the following: 

1. Rationale decisions/thoughts/opinion of human helps the development of AI in a more refined form. Both fields of study are considered as comple- mentary disciplines. 
2. AI views human instincts or innate behavior from the perspective of formal and statistical computation paradigm that builds the AI relation with epistemology. 
3. Epistemology opens the gates of knowledge for AI and induces a dynamic approach for AI rather being static, and dynamic approach is supported by machine learning, deep learning, Data Science, etc. 

Challenges 

Epistemology is generally divided into four branches and each branch have differ- ent views of thoughts constructions and each poses different kinds of challenge. 

• Realism 

According to this concept, things have absolute existence independent of thoughts, ideas, and consciousness, etc. So these absolute existence can be tapped because AI forces man to think computationally and fetch some results from it. One of the biggest challenge that realism poses is that how interpret real existence into subconscious of machine. So in this way, machine can’t be truly intelligent in full potential because there is no instrument or mechanism available yet that translate independent existence into machine consciousness. 

• Idealism 

According to this concept, a person knows things that exits in minds only. Ques- tion arise in mind that how to fetch knowledge from mind because knowledge only resides in minds. Human may know sky but can’t explain every aspect of it. So branch of epistemology, idealism, poses challenge in this way. 

• Pragmatism 

This field contends that most of the knowledge can be viewed in terms of prac- tical usage. Only practical ideas are only accepted and non-practical ideas are rejected according this approach. What about the non-practical things that norms, values, sentiments and beliefs etc. If someone is not practicing religious order, it can’t be said that he has no religion. So this approach poses also a challenge. 

• Constructivism 

This type of school of thoughts have different paradigm of thinking. According to this thought, it depends on human that ’how he construct knowledge.’ Each individual has different kinds of knowledge. So how machine can think like human if machine have to take/consider different kinds of construction of thoughts. According to one’s view a picture can be of tiger and other one say it’s a cat whereas third person can oppose both and can say that pic is a fiction. Construction of thoughts in AI poses different kinds of challenge. 

Conclusion 

Epistemology and AI are both complementary disciplines. AI can’t exist with- out epistemology because it has given birth to AI and for the development of AI, epistemology is most crucial. Human mind also has certain limitation that lim- itation does not let human think beyond limit. Whereas AI has some advantages besides challenges and vulnerabilities that it has the capacity to envision the things beyond human limit because machine has capability to calculate millions of data within time of eye blink and compute results within that time.