Monthly Archive September 2019
Google Glass Inventor to Speak at COSM, October 25
Babak Parviz, now an Amazon vice-president, is keenly interested in services for the swelling aged population worldwide
Canadian Province to Ban Cell Phones from Classrooms
Education experts are cautiously hopeful about reducing distraction and cyberbullying
Are You Trapped in a News Bubble?
The news filtered to you might leave out important things you need to know. But how can you tell?
Ask Alexa (and an anonymous crowd answers?)
Amazon is testing a crowd sourcing approach to difficult questions. How did that work out at Wikipedia?Wikipedia is a classic example of how crowdsourcing can go wrong. The obvious problem is anonymity and the lack of accountability that goes with it.
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Do We Actually Remember Everything?
Neuroscience evidence suggests that our real problem isn’t with remembering things but finding our memories when we need themOne of a pioneer neurosurgeon’s cases featured a patient who could, unaccountably, speak ancient Greek. The explanation was not occult but it was surely remarkable for what it shows about memory.
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Was famous old evidence against free will just debunked?
The pattern that was thought to prove free will an illusion may have been noiseThe participants in the experiment did not sense that their decision about flexing their fingers mattered, so they went with the flow. But, according to more recent research, the subjective experience of making a decision is not an illusion at all.
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Facebook Gets Rich Off What We Tell Our Friends
Social media pioneer David Gelernter also has a proposal for sharing the wealth more fairlyYale University computer science prof David Gelernter, “a leading figure in the third generation of artificial intelligence” (Edge.org). social networks pioneer, and Unabomber survivor, discusses his idea in a podcast at The Federalist Radio Hour.
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Fast Facts re the Google, Facebook Anti-Trust Probes
The 48-state pile-on comes just before an election yearThe accusations by American states of a Big Social Media stranglehold on advertising come on the heels of the European Union fining Google $billions in recent years for anti-competitive activities.
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Has Aristo broken bounds for thinking computers?
The Grade 8 graduate improves on Watson but we must still think for ourselves at school. Here’s why
Your Software Could Have More Rights Than You
Depending on politics and court judgments, legal loopholes could lead to AI personhoodWe have already witnessed an example of such an indignity. and consequent outrage, from many feminist scholars when Sophia the robot was granted citizenship in Saudi Arabia, a country notorious for unequal treatment of women.
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Alexa Really Does Not Understand Us
In a recent test, only 35 percent of the responses to simple questions were judged adequate
Why can’t monkeys typing forever produce Shakespeare?
Before communication can begin, there must be an intention to communicatePractitioners in the field of artificial intelligence often assume that intent does not matter in defining intelligence or that intent does not exist, that it is a useful illusion. Neither of these two approaches will work. Real communication requires intent.
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Do Churches Need a Catechism for Robots?
Are the claims about spiritual robots just an intellectual cottage industry for edgy clergy?Some people have taken Pope Francis’s musings in recent years to mean pretty much whatever they want them to mean. For example, But Francis’s wide arms have arguably never stretched further than a mass in 2014 when he suggested the church would baptize Martians. “If—for example—tomorrow an expedition of Martians came … and one says, ‘But I want to be baptized!’ What would happen?” Pope Francis asked. “When the Lord shows us the way, who are we to say, ‘No, Lord, it is not prudent! No, let’s do it this way.’” Jonathan Merritt, “Is AI a Threat to Christianity?” at The Atlantic (February 3, 2017) Merritt promptly converts the hypothetical question—which depends, of course, on the assumption that Martians are Read More ›
If Computers Are Intelligent, Climbing a Tree Is Flying
That, says Edward Feser, is the take-home message from Gary Smith’s book, The AI DelusionThe book’s message is that “the real danger of artificial intelligence is that it will remain dumber than we are,” but we will think it is smarter.
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Aging brains need exercise, not sofas for neurons
Neuroscientist Yuri Danilov reassures seniors, we do not lose neurons as we ageMaking a serious effort to learn keeps neurons healthy. That’s neuroplasticity.
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Always Wear Your Safety Glasses: A Tale for Our Times
What if we came to know the world only through our high tech aids? Russ White imagines…
The Unadvertised Cost of Doing Business with China
It’s a big market, with one Big Player, and some strange rules
They Say the New Delivery Service Is a Robot…
But of course there is a human (many, possibly) in the loopWhy do some PR agencies think it is so important that we forget the fellow human beings who help us, using robotic devices?
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Can We “Evolve” Self-Driving Cars?
The new method may be an advance but thinking of it as "evolution" at work risks misconceptionsIn evolution, “performance” just means the continued survival of a lineage. Thus it can include hybrids between what you might want for your purposes and what you don’t want.
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