ArchiveArticles
We Built the Power Big Social Media Have Over Us
Click by click, and the machines learned the patterns. Now we aren’t sure who is in chargeWe’re stuck, working for free, training the Web giants’ ML systems to reap benefits for them while enduring (assuming we notice) the downsides.
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Jordan Peterson’s New “Thinkspot” Takes Shape
Analysts ask, can his proposed rules work?What about the problem of expecting people to pay? Perhaps most people are so used to getting their social media for free for the same reasons as turkeys get their feed for free—because they’re the product—that they willingly submit to censorship?
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George Gilder on the Real-Life Prospects — and Limits — of AI
Gilder, who is organizing the COSM conference in Bellevue, Washington, in October, clears the fog about “the cloud”The “cloud” of cloud computing, that Gilder predicted, is things, not ideas. Thus it is subject to the limits of things, as opposed to the limits of ideas. It’s reasonable to ask where that limit is. It is probably both a question and an answer that we can understand.
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High Tech Can Help the Blind See and Amputees Feel
It’s not a miracle; the human nervous system can work with electronic informationThe electronic devices communicate directly with sensory areas of the brain, bypassing damaged or destroyed eyes and limbs.
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A Materialist Neuroscientist Continues the Argument with Himself
On the topic of “intellectual seizures,” he seems committed to both points of viewI assert that intellectual seizures do not exist. Dr. Ali asserts that they do exist and that they do not. The difference between their existence and their non-existence seems to be Dr. Ali’s rhetorical needs of the moment.
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Even Uber didn’t believe in Uber’s self-driving taxis
We found that out after Google’s Waymo sued the companyOptimism is not driving the recent collaboration and corporate consolidation in the self-driving car industry. Rather, their retrenchment is protection against an uncertain future.
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Is the Human Mind a Computer?
As a software engineer, I'd say we need to be clear what the question is before answering itOnce we understand clearly what a computer is, we will see why consciousness is not a form of computation.
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The Internet Doesn’t Free Anyone by Itself
China is testing 100% surveillance on the Uighurs, a strategically critical minorityThe Uyghur people in Xinjiang province in northwest China spend their lives in a digital panopticon. Over 2.5 million Muslims are tracked via facial recognition software and cameras, and their cell phone monitored for any language that could be construed as religious. Over a million have been placed in so-called “vocational training centers” that are widely described as detention camps. Even when not detained, they live like prisoners: For Uyghurs in Xinjiang, any kind of contact from a non-Chinese phone number, though not officially illegal, can result in instant arrest. Most Uyghurs in Turkey have been deleted by their families on social media. And many wouldn’t dare try to make contact, for fear Chinese authorities would punish their relatives. Isobel Read More ›
We went back to visit Gödel, Escher, and Bach…
Forty years after publication, how has a big explain-the-mind book withstood the test of time?Is there evidence that human minds function like computers and can soon be reproduced in software, as Hofstadter believed?
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You Think You Have Nothing To Hide?
Then why are Big Tech moguls making billions from what you and others tell them?The bottom line is this: if you think you don’t have anything to hide, then you don’t understand how the modern data economy really works, nor the impact of being caught in a riptide of public opinion.
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Chinese Technocracy Surges Ahead with AI Surveillance
So what do the reservations expressed, about “the soul” and “love,” really mean?Both big tech entrepreneurs Kai-Fu Lee and Jack Ma seem to believe in souls but do not believe that souls can be trusted with freedom, the way governments can.
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Can Materialism Explain Abstract Thought? Part II
Now Dr. Ali argues with Dr. AliI know of no report in medical history of an abstract thought evoked by a seizure or by brain stimulation. Which is odd, if the brain causes abstract thought.
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Can AI Predict and Prevent Political Unrest?
The 1996 Democratic Convention tried neural networks but discovered a hidden flawThe police union’s 1996 objection to fingering specific officers as violence risks without a detailed explanation pinpoints a weakness of neural networks even to this day. The neural network is basically a black box.
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If Thinking Can Heal, Why Do We Need Antidepressants?
J.P. Moreland, who struggles with anxiety disorders, likens medications to engine oil for the brain“If you’re driving your car and you’re low or don’t have any oil, parts of the engine are going to rub against one another and it’s going to cause a lot of friction and dysfunction.”
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Why It’s So Hard To Reform Peer Review
Robert J. Marks: Reformers are battling numerical laws that govern how incentives work. Know your enemy!Measurement creates a temptation to achieve a measurable goal by less than totally honest means. As in physics, the simple act of measuring invariably disturbs what you are trying to measure.
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Researchers: Apes Are Just Like Us!
And we’re not doing the right things to make them start behaving that way…In 2011, we were told in Smithsonian Magazine, “‘Talking’ apes are not just the stuff of science fiction; scientists have taught many apes to use some semblance of language.” Have they? If so, why has it all subsided? What happened?
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Henry Kissinger on Why We Must Adapt to AI
He thinks chessbot AlphaZero is “no longer constrained by the limits of human knowledge.” But is the story much simpler?Walter Bradley Center fellows aren’t really in a position to respond to the demands for "metamorphosis" (total transformation); they could and did, however, respond to specific claims made in the article for winning chessbot AlphaZero.
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Will Money Be “Real” in an Information Society?
Now that Facebook is proposing Libra, a cryptocurrency, this might be a good time to askMany of us know cryptocurrencies only from passing headline news. Yet thoughtful people argue that such currencies will help shape an information society. Why?
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What Is Abstract Thought? A Reply to Dr. Ali
Abstract thoughts cannot arise from material things because a cause cannot give what it does not haveDr. Ali’s deeper fallacy—deeper than his misunderstanding of the research—is his belief that mere complexity of material processes is sufficient to explain immaterial processes.
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