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Flying bird of prey golden eagle with large wingspan, photo with snowflakes during winter, stone mountain, Rhodope Mountains, Bulgaria wildlife. Eagle sunset. Eastern Rhodopes rock with eagle.

Neanderthal Man Had a Thing for Big Eagles — and Hyenas

But we haven’t found evidence that Neanderthals were much interested in dogs

Although technically a dog expert, Mark Derr has given some thought since the 1990s to Neanderthal man who seems to get smarter each time we study him: For instance, Neanderthal appears to have mastered and used fire for a variety of purposes including cooking after their appearance in Eurasia some 300,000 or more years ago. They also made carvings into ivory, and they almost certainly communicated using speech. To show how slowly attitudes change, I have recently seen people speculate that Neanderthal may have only seasonally had fire, but in general were incapable of igniting tinder on their own. This view recently received what would appear to be a mortal blow when Ceren Kabukcu and colleagues revealed that Neanderthal not Read More ›

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An internet email symbol and a group of people are separated by a red prohibitory symbol No. restrictions on access to the global Internet. Censorship. Information control, society isolation policy

Three Key Takeaways From the Twitter Files and Their Fallout

Twitter Files 7 dropped yesterday and it features the close relationship between Twitter and the FBI

From the news: Do you think the pandemic response might have gone differently if voices such as yours were not suppressed? Yes… I do really believe censorship kills, and censorship killed during this pandemic. The policies could have been so much better… The policies that were adopted were incredibly damaging to the lives and livelihoods of so many people. 100million people thrown into poverty worldwide: that’s the estimate from the World Bank. Just the consequences of that itself are going to have tremendous effects on the lives and livelihoods of people going forward. And of course, all these children were robbed of an education for years. Those are absolutely monumental outcomes of the policies we adopted during the pandemic, and Read More ›

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Black and white computer keyboard keys close-up. Concept of unstructured big data that need to be sorted ready to be consumed by machine learning model for deep learning.

Large Learning Models Are An Unfortunate Detour in AI

Gary Smith: Even though LLMs have no way of assessing the truth or falsity of the text they generate, the responses sound convincing

For decades, computer scientists have struggled to construct systems possessing artificial general intelligence (AGI) that rivals the human brain—including the ability to use analogies, take into account context, and understand cause-and-effect. Marvin Minsky (1927–2016) was hardly alone in his overly optimistic 1970 prediction that, “In from three to eight years we will have a machine with the general intelligence of an average human being.” AGI turned out to be immensely more difficult than imagined and researchers turned their attention to bite-size projects that were doable (and profitable). Recently, large language models (LLMs) — most notably OpenAI’s GPT-3 — have fueled a resurgence of hope that AGI is almost here. GPT-3 was trained by breaking 450 gigabytes of text data into Read More ›

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Man is using laptop with black keys, Social media and social networking. Marketing concept

Musk’s Tyrannical Turn With Twitter

While the political bias is gone, the ego bias seems to have just begun

I was hopeful when Elon Musk took control of Twitter. As a longtime Musk skeptic in many areas, I thought that his move into Twitter would actually be a good thing. First of all, it matches his background better than Tesla. Twitter is a software play, and Musk’s actual expertise is in building software. Second, Twitter is just about software, not artificial intelligence, which tends to be where Musk gets into trouble. Finally, Musk has at least claimed to be a libertarian, though this seems to be limited to situations where he simply decides that he doesn’t want to do what is required of everyone else. When Musk first took control, it looked positive. Despite the incessant screaming of the Read More ›

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Congress Spending Your Money.

Celebrating My 2 Billionth Birth-Second: What Big Numbers Mean

Let’s see if we can give a clearer, sharper personality to these big numbers

I have lived for over two billion seconds. In 2013, I celebrated my 2 billionth birth-second. The party did not last long. Today US spending and deficits are going through the roof. References to billions and trillions of dollars of spending and deficit are everywhere. The late US Senator Everett Dirksen of Illinois is purported to have said “A billion here, a billion there; pretty soon you’re talking about real money.” He said this in the middle of the last century. Today we can replace “billion” in Dirksen’s quote with “trillion.” Let’s see if we can give a clearer, sharper personality to these big numbers. A trillion is a thousand times bigger than a billion. If we scale a trillion Read More ›

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Dog does trick for treats

Researchers: Dogs Evaluate How Competent Humans Are

Provided that a treat is involved. Females pay more attention to competence in humans than males, they say

At Scientific American’s “60-Second Science” podcast (with transcript), science writer Karen Hopkin interviewed Kyoto University psychologist Hitomi Chijiiwa on her team’s recent finding that female dogs actively evaluate human competence. Because one their previous studies showed that dogs avoid people who refuse to help their human friends, the team decided to also test whether dogs form judgments about people based on their apparent skilfulness or competence: Chijiiwa: We showed 60 dogs two persons manipulating transparent containers. One person is competent. Hopkin: That person was able to pop open the top after just a couple of twists. Chijiiwa: Whereas the other person is incompetent and they failed at this task. Hopkin: That person tried to open the lid, then gave up. Read More ›

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Chat bot Robot Online Chatting Communication Business Internet Technology Concept

Why We Should Not Trust Chatbots As Sources of Information

A linguist and an information theorist say that chatbots lack any awareness of the information they provide — and that matters

Linguist Emily M. Bender and information theorist Chirag Shah, both of the University of Washington, have a message for those who think that the chatbot they are talking to is morphing into a real person: No. Not only that but there are good reasons to be very cautious about trusting chatbots as sources of information, all the more so because they sound so natural and friendly. First, decades of science fiction, the authors point out, have taught us to expect computer scientists to develop a machine like that: However, we must not mistake a convenient plot device — a means to ensure that characters always have the information the writer needs them to have — for a roadmap to how Read More ›

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Macro concept of a brain connecting to pure love and intent

Why Many Researchers Now See the Brain as a Quantum System

The hypothesis is that the brain relies on quantum physics, not classical physics, to power thinking processes

Astrophysicist and science writer Elizabeth Fernandez asks us to consider whether quantum processes might help us understand better how the brain works and shed light on consciousness: Some scientists suspect that quantum processes, including entanglement, might help us explain the brain’s enormous power, and its ability to generate consciousness. Recently, scientists at Trinity College Dublin, using a technique to test for quantum gravity, suggested that entanglement may be at work within our brains. If their results are confirmed, they could be a big step toward understanding how our brain, including consciousness, works. Elizabeth Fernandez, “Brain experiment suggests that consciousness relies on quantum entanglement” at Big Think (November 22, 2022) The paper is open access. Her thesis is that the brain Read More ›

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decisions

The Orville 3 8: The Writers Finally Figured Out Moral Ambiguity

Is it right to endanger the lives of many to save one? The Orville crew must confront that in the case of the Moclan girl Topa

Judging by my mixed emotions regarding the Episode 8 from Season 3, I’d say the writers did fairly well with tackling a morally ambiguous story. There are still problems, but nothing that damages the story. For once, the writers do not scream their opinions at the audience. They even chose two likable characters to act as surrogates for the opposing points of view. As the story opens, Topa wants to meet Heveena, the female Moclan who defended her in court when she was a baby and tried to prevent the all-male (by preference) race from turning her into a boy. Heveena was unable to convince the Moclans to spare Topa, but the young girl later learned the truth and was Read More ›

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Newspapers and Laptop. Different Concepts for News -  Network or Traditional Tabloid Journals. Data Sources - Electronic Screen of Computer or Paper Pages of Magazines, Internet or Papers

Layoffs at Washington Post Show Direction of Mainstream Media

As their role has changed so much, they simply no longer have a mass popular base

The Washington Post has started layoffs and it isn’t pretty: The Washington Post’s all-hands meeting turned chaotic Wednesday after the newspaper’s publisher announced looming layoffs – and then left the room as concerned employees shouted questions. The Jeff Bezos-owned broadsheet will conduct a round of layoffs during the first quarter of 2023, publisher Fred Ryan announced during what was supposed to be an hour-long meeting. Thomas Barrabi, “Washington Post announces layoffs during tense town hall before publisher Fred Ryan storms out” at New York Post (December 14, 2022) This follows the CNN layoff of hundreds of staffers, announced at the end of November and described as a gut punch to the organization. The laid-off include such figures as Chris Cillizza, Read More ›

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The face of a businessman and a robot opposite each other look into the eyes. Modern technologies, robot versus human, artificial intelligence, neural networks. 3D render, 3D illustration.

C-Span asks Marks: How Can AI Be Made Sentient? Innovative?

If they were hoping for a computers to be their best buddies, they might be disappointed in the computer engineer’s answer

Walter Bradley Center director Robert J. Marks was a guest at C-SPAN 2 TV in July, discussing his book, Non-Computable You: What You Do That Artificial Intelligence Never Will (Discovery Institute Press, 2022), and we now have the transcript as well as the video: Here’s the link to the video. Excerpt: Peter Slen: Professor Marks, what’s the missing element in artificial intelligence? To make it sentient. To make it innovative too… The premise of my book is that it will never be there. There are certain things which are non computable. This goes back to the genius Alan Turing in the 1930s. Now, Turing is probably best known for helping crack the Enigma code that helped win World War II Read More ›

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Border Collie puppies

Can a Dog Be Bred To Be As Smart As a Human?

An enterprising electrical engineer thinks it can be done

Within one hundred generations or roughly 600 years? That’s the project Payton Pearson, an electrical engineer who gives his affiliation as the Air Force Institute of Technology in Dayton, Ohio, has set himself: Artificial selection is a well-known phenomenon of selecting for certain physiological characteristics of various species of plants and animals, and it is something that human beings have been doing for thousands of years. A perfect example of this is the union and development of dogs under human stewardship since the beginning of the agricultural era of society. In that time, approximately 6,000 years [1], dogs have been artificially selected in such a way as to produce thousands of different breeds. From the stout Dachshund, a dog breed Read More ›

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Bitcoin chasing businessman in cryptocurrency price crash

FTX Implosion: There Are Warning Signs from Binance

The CEO of Binance fundamentally misrepresented the character of the firm's engagement of the Mazars auditing firm

Since the implosion of FTX, many have been watching cryptocurrency exchange Binance to see if it might be the next crypto firm to face a liquidity crunch. While the CEO of Binance, known in the crypto world as CZ (Changpeng Zhao), has assured investors and depositors that the firm is financially sound, many of its recent moves have left observers wondering if there is more to the story. The Audit that Wasn’t The first major red flag was the “audit.” Binance has long been criticized for failure to provide audited financial statements. Because it is not a public company, an audit is not a legal requirement. Nonetheless, many crypto watchers view the failure to have an external audit as evidence of concern Read More ›

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Non-Computable You: Bradley Center Celebrates Human Creativity in 2022

Humans are unique and will never be replaced by the machines they invent.

Note: Mind Matters News is made possible by support from the Walter Bradley Center for Natural and Artificial Intelligence, a project of the non-profit Discovery Institute. Here is a report of our activities for 2022. If you benefit from the work of Mind Matters News, could you donate to support our work in 2023? Humans are unique and will never be replaced by the machines they invent. That was the powerful takeaway from this year’s new book by Walter Bradley Center Director Robert J. Marks, Non-Computable You: What You Do that Artificial Intelligence Never Will. The release of Marks’ book was one of many ways that the Bradley Center advanced its mission in 2022 to defend human dignity and creativity Read More ›

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Disintegrating reaching hands concept illustration in vaporwave style color palette isolated on blue background.

What is Art Without the Human Mind?

AI art tools can wow us with technical skill, but fail to generate meaning

There’s no doubt that tools like OpenAI can create impressive, detailed renderings of images. Type in “Master Yoda riding a musk ox in Taiwan” and you’ll get…something. A friend of mine sent me a two-headed bunny dressed as Obi-Wan Kenobi and a few other comic horrors, and I knew he’d been playing around with an AI art tool. But, it doesn’t take much reflection to feel that something important is missing in these artificially generated images. Sure, they’re detailed and colorful, and accurate. You can type in a scene and have it pop up on command. However, what do actual human artists think of these tools, and what do they essentially miss? Artist Peter Mohrbacher gave a balanced assessment of Read More ›

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Digital chatbot, robot application, conversation assistant, AI Artificial Intelligence concept.

Did the GPT3 Chatbot Pass the Lovelace Creativity Test?

The Lovelace Test determines whether the computer can think creatively. We found out…

The GPT-3 chatbot is awesome AI. Under the hood, GPT3 is a transformer model that uses sequence-to-sequence deep learning that can produce original text given an input sequence. In other words, GPT-3 is trained by using how words are positionally related. The arrangement of words and phrases to create well-formed sentences in a language is called syntax. Semantics is the branch of linguistics concerned with the meanings of words. GPT-3 trains on the syntax of training data to learn and generate interesting responses to queries. This was the intent of the programmers. GPT-3 is not directly concerned with semantics. Given a tutorial on a topic from the web, for example, GPT-3 does not learn from the tutorial’s teaching, but only Read More ›

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Venus flytrap is one of the carnivore plants

A Science Writer Makes the Case for Plants as Conscious Beings

Annaka Harris, neuroscience and physics writer, starts by casting doubt on human consciousness

Annaka Harris, a science writer focusing on neuroscience and physics and the author of Conscious: A Brief Guide to the Fundamental Mystery of the Mind (2019), challenges us to reflect on two points: 1) In a system that we know has conscious experiences — the human brain — what evidence of consciousness can we detect from the outside? 2) Is consciousness essential to our behavior? The editor notes, introducing an excerpt from the book, “But how sure can we be that plants aren’t conscious? And what if what we take to be behavior indicating consciousness can be replicated with no conscious agent involved? Annaka Harris invites us to consider the real possibility that our intuitions about consciousness might be mere Read More ›

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A television anchorwoman at studio

As the Twitter Files Drop, Ponder the Future of Mainstream Media

Mainstream media are largely ignoring the story for reasons that go to the heart of their own growing weakness and unstoppable decline

The Twitter files, as Elon Musk’s publication of Twitter’s internal censorship records — via dissident journalists — has come to be known, continue to drop. To recap, the drop started with the suppression of the story, on the eve of an election, about Hunter Biden’s seemingly incriminating laptop (Matt Taibbi). It continued with information about widespread shadowbanning (Bari Weiss), a practice the company denied it engaged in. Twitter files slice 3 and slice 4 (given by Musk to journalist Michael Shellenberger) address Twitter’s ban on former U.S. president Donald Trump. Slice 5 (Bari Weiss) detail doubts among Twitter employees about censoring on that scale: 7. There were dissenters inside Twitter. “Maybe because I am from China,” said one employee on Read More ›

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Coronavirus Pandemic. A disinfector in a protective suit and mask sprays disinfectants in office. Protection agsinst COVID-19 disease. Prevention of spreding pneumonia virus with surfaces.

When the Chinese Had Had Enough, Their Government Had To Listen

Embarrassingly, Xi had already declared victory over the virus in 2020, touting authoritarian governments as better able to respond

“The political object is the goal, war is the means of reaching it, and means can never be considered in isolation from their purpose.” (von Clausewitz, On War) Beijing’s zero-Covid policy was not sustainable. The highly publicized events in October and November in Urumqi, Xinjiang and at the Zhengzhou Foxconn factory served as the inciting events for what became a nationwide call for ending zero-Covid, giving people their freedoms — and there were even calls for Xi Jinping to step down. In the course of a week, Beijing went from touting zero-Covid to easing restrictions to censoring mentions of zero-Covid policy online. In November in Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang, several residents, including four children, died in an apartment fire Read More ›

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sign requesting no profanity.

Researchers: Profanity Has Some Elements of a Universal Language

They found that, in a number of languages, profanity omits certain sounds and stresses others

In a study, researchers found that, across different languages, swear words tended to lack soundssuch as l, r, and w: Shiri Lev-Ari and Ryan McKay from Royal Holloway, University of London conducted a pilot study with speakers of five unrelated languages (20 individuals per language) and asked them to list the most offensive words they knew in their language, excluding racial slurs. The initial study revealed that swear words were less likely to include approximants, which include sounds like l, r, w and y. The authors suggest that approximants may be less suitable than other sounds for giving offense and investigated this in two further studies. Springer, “The universal sound of swearing across languages” at Eurekalert (December 5, 2022) The Read More ›