Is There a Gold Mine in Electronic Waste?
Yes, and it is much bigger than most of us realizeRecovering more precious metals from our departed electronics would help both economic growth and sustainable development at once.
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Abortion Advocate Admits in a Medical Journal That Unborn Children Feel Pain
The scientific community has for decades misrepresented the straightforward science of conception and fetal development for ideological reasonsI have cared for hundreds of premature infants and it is very clear that these very young children experience pain intensely. An innocuous needlestick in the heel to draw small amount of blood would ordinarily not be particularly painful for an adult. But a tiny infant will scream at such discomfort.
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So Is an AI Winter Really Coming This Time?
AI did surge past milestones during the 2010s but fell well short of the hypeMaybe both. AI will require more from us, not less, because how we choose to use these tools will make an increasingly stark difference between benefit and ruin.
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Will an AI Win a Nobel Prize for Science All by Itself One Day?
No, but Support Vector Machines (SVMs) can allow scientists to frame questions so that a comprehensible answer is more likelyAI can certainly help scientists. But to understand why AI can’t do science on its own, we should take a look at the NP-Hard Problem in computer science. The “Hard” is in the name of the problem for a reason…
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Bridge: Why Shuffle the Deck Seven Times?
For years, competitive bridge players complained that computer shuffling of cards produced goofy results. Statisticians sided with the computersBridge is one of the few games where computer algorithms have not yet demolished the best human players but, despite claims to the contrary, algorithms do a much better job of random shuffling of the deck.
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Why Would Philosophers Deny That Consciousness Is Real?
Because, says computer scientist Bernardo Kastrup, the materialism they are committed to makes no sense and that’s the best they can doA Dutch computer scientist and philosopher who has reflected deeply on the mind–matter problem finds himself asking, how can serious scientists or philosophers convince themselves that their own consciousness “doesn’t exist” or is a “mistaken construct”? What, exactly, is thinking the thought that their consciousness doesn’t exist? I want to understand what makes the consciousness of an intelligent human being deny its own existence with a straight face. For I find this denial extremely puzzling for both philosophical and psychological reasons. Don’t get me wrong, the motivation behind the denial is obvious enough: it is to tackle a vexing problem by magically wishing it out of existence. As a matter of fact, the ‘whoa-factor’ of this magic gets eliminativists and Read More ›
Can a Totalitarian State Be an Information Society?
Beijing’s clumsy social media campaigns against democracy in Hong Kong and Taiwan have failed but attempts to control local media are ramping upXi believes that the Western values of a free press, free speech, and separation of powers contributed to the fall of the Soviet Union and that China must avoid them so as not to succumb to the same fate. But the Soviet Union fell just before the internet became today’s information superhighway.
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Her (2013): If You Created Her, Is It Real Love?
In this retrospective Mind Matters movie review, Adam Nieri ponders the questions raised by a thoughtful AI filmUnlike Catherine, Samantha is exactly what Theodore was looking for. No surprise there; Samantha is, literally, adjusted and updated according to Theodore’s preferences from when he initially began speaking to her. She exists only to be Theodore’s soulmate. Is that enough?
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Yes, Split Brains Are Weird, But Not the Way You Think
Scientists who dismiss consciousness and free will ignore the fact that the higher faculties of the mind cannot be split even by splitting the brain in halfPatients after split-brain surgery are not split people. They feel the same, act the same, and think the same, for all intents and purposes. Materialists like Jerry Coyne focus on subtle differences and distort the big picture.
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Can We Outsource Hiring Decisions to AI and Go for Coffee Now?
I would have fired any of my hiring managers who demonstrated characteristic AI traits immediately. So why do we tolerate it coming from a machine?With historically low unemployment, employers are tempted to reduce costs and speed up the process using artificial intelligence (AI) systems. These systems might help but, for best results, let’s have a look at the problems they can’t solve and some that they might create.
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Book at a Glance: Robert J. Marks’s Killer Robots
What if ambitious nations such as China and Iran develop lethal AI military technology but the United States does not?Artificial intelligence expert Robert J. Marks tackles the contentious subject of military drones in his just-published book, The Case for Killer Robots: Why America’s Military Needs to Continue Development of Lethal AI. Many sources (30 countries, 110+ NGOs, 4500 AI experts, the UN Secretary General, the EU, and 26 Nobel Laureates) have called for these lethal AI weapons to be banned. Dr. Marks, a Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Baylor University, disagrees. What if ambitious nations such as China and Iran develop lethal AI military technology but the United States does not? Nations that wish to maintain independence (sovereignty), he argues, must remain competitive in military AI. (“Advanced technology not only wins wars but gives pause to Read More ›
Scientific American Explores Panpsychism… Respectfully
This is a major change. At one time, a science mag would merely ridicule the idea of a conscious universeMake no mistake, panpsychism—as Goff elucidates it—is a purely naturalist view (“nothing supernatural or spiritual”). But, unlike the village atheist, he goes on to ask, but then what is nature? Matter is all there is? But what is matter? It turns out, no one really knows.
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Can AI Help Hollywood Predict the Next Big Hit?
AI analysis sifts the past finely. But how well does the past predict the future?AI does pose at least one threat to filmmaking. It could intensify the very tone-deafness that studios hope it can fix: Too much reliance on ever more finely grained analysis of the patterns in past data could blind decision makers to the real risks, volatility, and opportunities in the future. That’s a recipe for losing money and inflicting “Oh, not that again!” on audiences.
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Serious Media In China Have Gone Strangely Silent
With a compulsory new app, the government can potentially access journalists’ phones, both for surveillance and capturing dataLiu Hu sums up the scene in a few words: “Outside of China, journalists are fired for writing false reports… Inside China, they are fired for telling the truth.”
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EVERYONE Can Beat the Market!
We’ve all heard: “No one can beat the market.” Is that true? Let’s look a little deeperUsing your talents to identify and invest in high-quality assets and pull money away from low-quality assets is a benefit to everyone involved in the market and, on the larger scale, the market’s future. If you invest in this way, you will beat the market.
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AI Goes to Hollywood
Warner Bros. hopes Cinelytic's AI will save time while making more reasonable financial estimates, thus forestalling expensive box office blundersCinelytic’s AI does is what every AI does at its most basic level. It collects and sifts large amounts of data to find patterns that can be used to make predictions. AI excels at pattern recognition because that is its only purpose. Humans aren’t so linear or predictable.
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Robots Move? Tax Them!
Some policymakers see robots as a direct threat to jobs and hope taxes will slow them downJay Richards asks: Just imagine if our government had taxed earlier technological innovations because they threatened jobs. Does anyone think a targeted “tractor tax” would have been a good idea in the early twentieth century?
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Can Machines Be Given Consciousness?
A prominent researcher in consciousness studies offers reasons for doubtTwo theories of human consciousness are about to be tested in a historic contest. Integrated Information Theory (IIT) of consciousness and rival Global Workspace Theory (GWT) have sharply different implications for consciousness in machines.
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Serious Investors Should Embrace the Stock Market Algos!
We can use computers’ inability to distinguish meaning from noise in data to our advantageComputer algorithms are much, much better than humans at discovering statistical patterns but much, much worse than humans at discerning whether the patterns are meaningful. Wise investors can use the resulting blips to their advantage.
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How AI Can Help Us Fight Cancer
Breast cancer is an excellent example of how AI can speed up early detectionAI catches things doctor miss, and doctors catch things AI misses. Using the AI to highlight what may be cancer tissue helps the radiologist focus on ambiguous situations, reducing the chance of missing early cancers.
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