Month: September 2018

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Mind Matters
Date
September 30, 2018

Categorized
Machine Learning, Social Factors

Tagged
Art Moore, George Gilder, Google, World News Daily (WND)}

George Gilder talks tech at World News Daily

_{In a three-part interview the tech philosopher explains why he thinks Google is doomed} _{Mind Matters
September 30, 2018

4

Machine Learning, Social Factors}

“The Google dream is a supermind in the sky that knows everything,” Gilder told WND. “My dream is to distribute information as human minds are distributed.” Read More ›

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Mind Matters
Date
September 29, 2018

Categorized
Data Privacy, Ethics

Tagged
corporate surveillance, education, Google, Surveillance}

Google is collecting data on schoolkids

_{Some say it’s okay because the firm supplies a lot of free software and hardware to schools} _{Mind Matters
September 29, 2018

4

Data Privacy, Ethics}

Many parents may not be content to let matters rest there; they might prefer to pay taxes for school equipment and have less surveillance in our lives overall. Read More ›

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Mind Matters
Date
September 27, 2018

Categorized
Education

Tagged
children, television}

Children are watching much less TV

_{But what we learned from children’s TV is coming back to haunt us} _{Mind Matters
September 27, 2018

6

Education}

Maxwell King: Sesame Street's pacing "was set to be as fast as the times, with some emulation of Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In and the television serial Batman." Read More ›

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Mind Matters
Date
September 27, 2018

Categorized
Social Factors

Tagged
children, Natural Intelligence}

Will AI triumph?

_{Will that phone end up smarter than your kid?} _{Mind Matters
September 27, 2018

2

Social Factors}

If so, it might not happen in quite the way we are told to fear. U.S. kids spend more than two hours a day looking at screens "perform worse on memory, language and thinking tests than kids who spend less time in front of a device. Read More ›

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Michael Egnor
Date
September 26, 2018

Categorized
Machine Learning, Neuroscience, Philosophy of Mind

Tagged
brain, Jeffrey Shallit}

Do either machines—or brains—really learn?

_{A further response to Jeffrey Shallit: Actually, brains don’t learn either. Only minds learn.} _{Michael Egnor
September 26, 2018

4

Machine Learning, Neuroscience, Philosophy of Mind}

Learning is an ability of human beings, considered as a whole, to acquire new knowledge, not an ability of human organs considered individually. Read More ›

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Denyse O'Leary
Date
September 25, 2018

Categorized
Artificial Intelligence, Natural Intelligence, Neuroscience, Social Factors

Tagged
Bryan Walsh, Chen Tianqiao, Dalai Lama, Michael Egnor, Virtual Reality}

Inner peace: Is there software for that?

_{Tech billionaire funds neuroscience in a search for the secret of contentment} _{Denyse O'Leary
September 25, 2018

3

Artificial Intelligence, Natural Intelligence, Neuroscience, Social Factors}

His approach to neuroscience is very different from that of the Dalai Lama, who facilitates neuroscience research to better understand contemplation as a path to inner peace. Chen’s focus is more on developing virtual reality. Read More ›

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Mind Matters
Date
September 25, 2018

Categorized
Ethics

Tagged
censorship, China, Google, Silicon Valley, Surveillance}

Google Powering China’s Snoop Culture

_{They’ve suppressed the memo but can’t suppress the uproar around it} _{Mind Matters
September 25, 2018

4

Ethics}

It may at first seem deeply ironic that a Silicon Valley ostensibly committed to liberal values would help to unleash this storm. But a political analyst carefully traces the growth in its enthusiasm for “smart government,” using the tools of information technology for social engineering. Read More ›

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Michael Egnor
Date
September 25, 2018

Categorized
Artificial Intelligence, Philosophy of Mind

Tagged
Jeffrey Shallit}

Machines really can learn!

_{A computer scientist responds to my parable} _{Michael Egnor
September 25, 2018

4

Artificial Intelligence, Philosophy of Mind}

Jeffrey Shallit argues that a computer is not just a machine, but something quite special.

So lifelike…

_{Another firm caught using humans to fake AI} _{Mind Matters
September 24, 2018

3

Natural Intelligence}

Byzantine claims and counterclaims followed as other interpreters came forward with similar stories. According to Qian, something similar happened last year. Read More ›

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Mind Matters
Date
September 24, 2018

Categorized
Machine Learning, Natural Intelligence, Social Factors

Tagged
Ankur Gopal, employment, Kentucky, rlie Hothschild, Unemployment}

The Hills Go High Tech

_{An American community finding its way in the new digital economy} _{Mind Matters
September 24, 2018

4

Machine Learning, Natural Intelligence, Social Factors}

At present, says Hochschild, Ankur Gopal and Interapt are sourcing as many new hillbillies as they can find: “For now, there is so much demand for I.T. workers — 10,000 estimated openings by 2020 in the Louisville metro area alone — that Mr. Gopal is reaching out to new groups. Read More ›

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Mind Matters
Date
September 23, 2018

Categorized
Ethics, Machine Learning, Social Factors

Tagged
China, Google, Surveillance}

Digital dictatorship?

_{China’s “social credit” system coming under scrutiny} _{Mind Matters
September 23, 2018

2

Ethics, Machine Learning, Social Factors}

It is not clear that most Chinese people understand the implications yet but many in the industry do. As of September 16, over 1400 Google employees had signed a letter of protest against Google’s involvement in Chinese censorship. Read More ›

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Mind Matters
Date
September 23, 2018

Categorized
Social Factors

Tagged
citation, digitization, science}

Does digitization threaten science?

_{It enables new abuses, according to a Cambridge nanoscientist} _{Mind Matters
September 23, 2018

3

Social Factors}

The problem is not digitization as such, of course, but the mindset that it inadvertently encourages. Sometimes, for example, “citation rings” agree to cite each other’s papers so as to artificially inflate their rankings. Sometimes it graduates to “citation stacking” Read More ›

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Michael Egnor
Date
September 21, 2018

Categorized
Natural Intelligence

Tagged
Artificial Intelligence, ethics, immateriality, intellect, passions, Philosophy of Mind, will}

Apes Can Be Generous

_{Are they just like humans then?} _{Michael Egnor
September 21, 2018

9

Natural Intelligence}

If we are to genuinely understand machines, animals, and ourselves, we need to clearly understand that it is the immateriality of human intellect and will—our capacity to think and act abstractly— that makes us radically (i.e. ontologically) different from any animal or machine. Read More ›

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Mind Matters
Date
September 20, 2018

Categorized
Education, Social Media

Tagged
Coddling of the American Mind, Greg Lukianoff, iGen, Instagram, Jean Twenge, Jonathan Haidt}

Maybe iGen really IS fragile

_{Did social media's troll frenzies trigger the campus war on ideas?} _{Mind Matters
September 20, 2018

6

Education, Social Media}

Twenty-four-year-old fashion blogger Scarlett Dixon posted a picture of herself having breakfast, “looking flawless on a freshly made bed flanked by heart-shaped helium balloons.” The orcs burst suddenly through the virtual gate. Read More ›

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Mind Matters
Date
September 20, 2018

Categorized
Natural Intelligence

Tagged
intelligence, octopus, Philosophy of Mind, robotics}

Is the octopus a “second genesis of intelligence”?

_{Can its strange powers provide insights for robotics or the human mind?} _{Mind Matters
September 20, 2018

3

Natural Intelligence}

What’s really interesting about these stories is that, while we are learning that there is much intelligence in the animal (and plant) world, including some that can be applied to robotics, very little sheds light on explicitly human intelligence. Read More ›

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Eric Holloway
Date
September 19, 2018

Categorized
Artificial Intelligence

Tagged
Information Theory, Law of Independence Conservation, Leonid Levin, mutual information, Shannon information, Turing Machine}

Artificial intelligence is impossible

_{Meaningful information vs artificial intelligence} _{Eric Holloway
September 19, 2018

4

Artificial Intelligence}

Because the law of independence conservation states that no combination of randomness and determinism can create mutual information, then likewise no Turing machine nor artificial intelligence can create mutual information. Thus, the goal of artificial intelligence researchers to reproduce human intelligence with a computer program is impossible to achieve. Read More ›

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Mind Matters
Date
September 18, 2018

Categorized
Machine Learning

Tagged
Cal Lightman, emotions, Facial Recognition, Paul Eckman, Rich Firth-Godbehere, Social Factors}

You Have Just Six Emotions

_{At least it would be easier for the machines if we did} _{Mind Matters
September 18, 2018

7

Machine Learning}

Efforts to enable machines to read our emotions are hitting a roadblock and, oddly enough, Charles Darwin, founder of popular evolution theory, plays a role in getting it wrong. Read More ›

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Mind Matters
Date
September 17, 2018

Categorized
Machine Learning, Work

Tagged
Annie Lowrey, David Graeber, Jay Richards, Unemployment, Universal Basic Income}

Is the future of jobs over?

_{Should people be paid to let machines do the work?} _{Mind Matters
September 17, 2018

7

Machine Learning, Work}

Recently, there have been short-term limited experiments with a Universal Basic Income but it’s hard to evaluate a transformative social policy with such limited and cherry-picked data. And, says Richards, paying people not to work would simply slow their move into the job markets of the digital age. Read More ›

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Mind Matters
Date
September 16, 2018

Categorized
Ethics, Events, Social Factors

Tagged
coconut oil, coconuts, Dignity Coconuts, Petra Christian University, sustainable agriculture, Walter Bradley}

Coconuts Go High Tech

_{Plastics from coconut waste offer economic benefit to poor farmers} _{Mind Matters
September 16, 2018

6

Ethics, Events, Social Factors}

One of Walter Bradley’s longstanding goals as an engineer and materials scientist has been to harness advanced materials technology to help the world’s poor, most of whom are poor farmers.

The true cost of “free” social media

_{It’s free but… are we? George Gilder points a way forward.} _{Denyse O'Leary
September 15, 2018

5

Ethics, Machine Learning, Social Factors}

He thinks that expected massive increases in computing power will enable blockchain technologies that allow users to safely bypass the global data monopoly that Google and similar firms represent. Read More ›