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Close up of a Chimpanzee-family (mother and her two kids)

Retro Future: In a 1960s Take on the 2020s, Chimps Do Our Chores

And drive cars. The Rand Corporation actually put out a video promoting the idea…

Our “past future” — that is, what people fifty or sixty years ago thought life would be like today — can be instructive and sobering. In 1964, the Rand Corporation put out the idea that by 2020, chimpanzees would be doing household tasks and (safely) driving cars. (The chimps are from 40 seconds to 110 seconds.) The idea that chimpanzees are just furry people must have been well entrenched in those days. It was during the same time period that some prominent scientists, including Frank Drake and Carl Sagan (1934–1996), were actively researching the idea of communicating intelligently with dolphins as well. But the sad reality is that efforts to integrate chimpanzees (and dolphins) into the human world have often Read More ›

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multiverse conceptual illustration

Dr. Strange’s Multiverse of Madness Features Infinite Problems

The extensive edits to Sam Rami’s work as a director have left it riddled with plot holes and inconsistencies

In my review last week, I ranted about the multiverse as a concept in storytelling, and how the Mouse has used it an excuse to turn Wanda Maximoff into a sorry shadow of her former self. If I could describe the problems overall with the movie in one word, that word would be laziness. The multiverse is used as an excuse for all kinds of incoherent nonsense. Before going into detail, it is important to note that Multiverse of Madness (2022) went through massive reshoots before its release. Film aficionados have said that, while there are hints of Sam Rami’s directing style, they were very few in number and it is evident that the edits to the film were extensive. Read More ›

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Twitter handle with care

Elon Musk Has Walked Out on Twitter … Or Has He?

Some think it’s all theater. Others that he is compelling a price reduction “by other means”

Yesterday, Elon Musk announced that he was backing out of the deal to buy Twitter, which he was hoping to turn into more of a free speech platform: Elon Musk, the chief executive officer of Tesla (TSLA.O) and the world’s richest person, said on Friday he was terminating his $44 billion deal to buy Twitter (TWTR.N) because the social media company had breached multiple provisions of the merger agreement. Greg Roumeliotis, “Twitter vows legal fight after Musk pulls out of $44 billion deal” at Reuters (July 9, 2022) Twitter plans to fight: The Twitter Board is committed to closing the transaction on the price and terms agreed upon with Mr. Musk and plans to pursue legal action to enforce the Read More ›

Young businesswoman thinking while using a laptop at work

Marks: Computers Only Compute and Thinking Needs More Than That

Robert J. Marks talks about his new book, Non-Computable You, with Oregon-based talk show host Bill Meyer

Recently, Bill Meyer interviewed Walter Bradley Center director Robert J. Marks on his Oregon-based talk show about “Why computers will never understand what they are doing,” in connection with his new book, Non-Computable You: What You Do That Artificial Intelligence Never Will (Discovery Institute Press, 2022). We are rebroadcasting it with permission here as (Episode 194). Meyer began by saying, “I started reading a book over the weekend that I am going to continue to eagerly devour because it cut against some of my preconceived notions”: https://mindmatters.ai/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/07/Mind-Matters-194-Bob-Marks-Bill-Meyer.mp3 A partial transcript, notes,  and Additional Resources follow. Meyer and Marks began by discussion the recent flap at Google where software engineer Blake Lemoine claimed that the AI he was working with was Read More ›

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Artificial Intelligence self aware android robots patrolling a destroyed city. 3d rendering

Study: AI Will Make Human Factors More, Not Less, Critical in War

Counterintuitive? Not when we factor in the “fog of war” that makes military situations more confusing than, say, conventional business ones

We sometimes hear that artificial intelligence in the military means that AI takes the risks and does the fighting while humans direct from a safe distance. It sounds reassuring but it’s not likely, say Georgia Institute of Technology cybersecurity professor Jon Lindsay and University of Toronto AI professor Avi Goldfarb: Many policy makers assume human soldiers could be replaced with automated systems, ideally making militaries less dependent on human labor and more effective on the battlefield. This is called the substitution theory of AI, but Lindsay and Goldfarb state that AI should not be seen as a substitute, but rather a complement to existing human strategy. “Machines are good at prediction, but they depend on data and judgment, and the Read More ›

An abstract computer generated fractal design. A fractal is a never-ending pattern. Fractals are infinitely complex patterns that are self-similar across different scales.

Some Infinities Are Bigger Than Others But There’s No Biggest One

Georg Cantor came up with an ingenious proof that infinities can differ in size even though both remain infinite

When a child is asked “what is bigger than infinity,” the response is often “Infinity plus one.” No. Infinity plus one is still infinity. But we can show that the number of points on the interval zero to one is a bigger infinity than the counting numbers are. The first clue is the fact that we can’t count the number of points on a line interval. Try labeling the points on a line as points 1, 2, 3, etc. No matter what scheme you come up with, there will always be some points on the line segment that are not included in your count. Georg Cantor (1845–1918) came up with an ingenious argument to show that the infinite number of Read More ›

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books

Brain for Hire: The Internet Makes Academic Cheating Much Easier

Dave Tomar, who wrote essays for students for hire for a decade, then wrote a book about it, thinks 40% of students cheat at least once

For many years, Dave Tomar was that bane that universities always claim to be doing something about but can’t (or anyway never) do — an essay writer for hire. Wait. Wasn’t the internet supposed to end cheating? The search engine reveals all, right?… No. Read on. In The Complete Guide to Contract Cheating in Higher Education (Academic Influence, 2022), Tomar, long a freelance writer and now a plagiarism expert, explains: Yes, that happened when Google became the default search engine in 2000 and the usual copy-paste and essay mill methods no longer worked. But… Cheaters and their enablers would just need to get more creative. If, before, there were just online repositories of essays and the people who curated them, Read More ›

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Concept of robots replacing humans in offices

Marks: Forget the Hype, “Thinking Machines” Can’t Replace Humans

It’s easy to picture, especially if we don’t know much about computers. And fears are easily exploited. But what are the facts?

Walter Bradley Center director Robert J. Marks gave a talk in January at the Dallas Conference on Science and Faith on whether a robot will really take your job: “AI Apocalypse: Will Thinking Machines Replace Humans?” Just released on video: As a computer engineer, Marks looks at the pop culture worry a bit differently from some. His skeptical response has also been captured in a just-published book, Non-Computable You: What You Do That Artificial Intelligence Never Will (Discovery Institute Press, 2022). The book makes clear that computers compute. They don’t really do anything that cannot be expressed as a computation. That’s both a strength and a weakness. The ability of an algorithm to sort through billions of online documents in Read More ›

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World twitter Connection on Blackboard

Twitter Now Suing India’s Government Over Its Censorship Demands

Meanwhile, on July 4, new owner-to-be Elon Musk tweets a jab at Twitter’s own censors: the British government “fact checks” Paul Revere

Twitter, never out of the news for long these days, is suing the government of India over censorship issues: On Tuesday, the U.S. social media platform asked an Indian court to overturn some of the government orders to kill posts, which Delhi had accused of spreading misinformation. They included posts that backed farmer protests and tweets critical of the government’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. Twitter called the crackdown overbroad and arbitrary, with the government demonstrating an “excessive use of powers”. Rina Chandran, “Twitter battles India for control of social media content” at Thomson Reuters Foundation News (July 6, 2022) No date is yet set for the hearing. Observers might be surprised by Twitter’s anti-censorship stance here, given the history Read More ›

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baby chimpanzee ape at the zoo.

Human Brain Has Many More Language Connections Than Chimp Brain

That finding isn’t surprising in principle but the researchers pinned down specific areas of greater connectivity

In a study of brain scans from 50 humans and 29 chimpanzees, researchers discovered an interesting difference: The connections between language areas in the human brain are much larger than previously thought and quite different from those of the chimpanzee brain. That’s, of course, consistent with the relative complexity of human thought and language but the question had not really been examined before with a focus on one specific area. The researchers were interested in a nerve tract that connects the frontal and temporal lobes of the brain, the arcuate fasciculus. Chimpanzee brain connectivity seems to involve mainly the temporal lobe but in humans there is a connection towards the frontal and parietal lobes via the arcuate fasciculus. “Our findings Read More ›

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Several cards

The Holy Rollers: Christians Who Gamble for God

Not only have many successful players been Christians, probability theory was developed in part by a philosopher who became a devout Christian

This last instalment of the writeup of the podcasts with mathematician, computer scientist, engineer — and part-time gambler — Salvador Cordova looks at why and how Christians like himself gamble without cheating. Cordova was one of the crowdfunders of a film on the topic called Holy Rollers (2011). The host is fellow engineer and Walter Bradley Center director Robert J. Marks in “Card Counting Strategies and Dangers” (podcast, June 23, 2022): https://mindmatters.ai/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/06/Mind-Matters-News-Episode-192-Sal-Cordova-Episode-4-rev1.mp3 This portion begins at 15:47 min. A partial transcript and notes, Show Notes, and Additional Resources follow. Robert J. Marks: First of all, tell us what the movie was about, and then your involvement. Sal Cordova: It’s about one of the most successful card counting teams, blackjack teams. Read More ›

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policewoman holding arrested young woman while her partner talking on portable radio

Can AI Really Predict Crime a Week in Advance? That’s the Claim.

University of Chicago data scientists claim 90% accuracy for their algorithm using past data — but it’s hard to evaluate

The University of Chicago recently announced to great fanfare that, Data and social scientists from the University of Chicago have developed a new algorithm that forecasts crime by learning patterns in time and geographic locations from public data on violent and property crimes. The model can predict future crimes one week in advance with about 90% accuracy. University of Chicago Medical Center, “Algorithm Predicts Crime a Week in Advance, but Reveals Bias in Police Response” at Newswise (June 28, 2022) Many thought immediately of the 2002 movie Minority Report, in which three psychics (“precogs”) visualize murders before they occur, thereby allowing special PreCrime police to arrest would-be assailants before they can commit them. Have these University of Chicago researchers made Read More ›

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PI

4. How Almost Any Number Can Encode the Library of Congress

That’s a weird, counterintuitive — but quite real — consequence of the concept of infinity in math

We are used to dealing with simple numbers, like ½ and 2. Most numbers are not that simple. Most numbers, like 0.847859028378490… go on forever and ever without repeating or showing any pattern. Note that such numbers, called irrational numbers, have an infinite number of digits. And there are a lot of them. The number 0.847859028378490… for example differs from the number 0.847859023378490… (See if you can spot the difference.) If two numbers differ only at the billionth decimal and are otherwise the same, they are different numbers. Because an irrational number is infinitely long — and we have seen in the first three posts that weird things happen with infinity — we’d expect something weird to happen with irrational Read More ›

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Happy pregnant woman visit gynecologist doctor at hospital or medical clinic for pregnancy consultant. Doctor examine pregnant belly for baby and mother healthcare check up. Gynecology concept.

Activists to Google Maps: Crack Down on Crisis Pregnancy Centers

Overall, the U.S. abortion rate has been in decline for about thirty years, for a variety of reasons, including available alternatives

When the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent Dobbs decision (June 24, 2022) that “The Constitution does not confer a right to abortion” (SCOTUSblog) returned the abortion issue to the state legislatures, a number crisis pregnancy centers (CPCs) that do not offer abortion have been attacked by abortion militants. One source the militants appear to be using is an online map of such centers created by University of Georgia biostatisticians Andrea Swartzendruber and Danielle Lambert, who call them “fake women’s health centers.” For example: Puget Sound Anarchists posted a link to the map in a post made about a vandalism at a Vancouver, Washington pregnancy center. Crisis pregnancy center Options 360 was vandalized with red paint, and the phrase “Jane’s Revenge.” The Read More ›

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The emergence of a problem and the search for solutions. Many options for solving a complex problem

Machines with Minds? The Lovelace Test vs. the Turing Test

The answers computer programs give sometimes surprise me too — but they always result from their programming

Non-Computable You: What You Do That Artificial Intelligence Never Will (Discovery Institute Press, 2022) by Robert J. Marks is available here. What follows is an excerpt from Chapter 2. Selmer Bringsjord, and his colleagues have proposed the Lovelace test as a substitute for the flawed Turing test. The test is named after Ada Lovelace. Bringsjord defined software creativity as passing the Lovelace test if the program does something that cannot be explained by the programmer or an expert in computer code.2 Computer programs can generate unexpected and surprising results.3 Results from computer programs are often unanticipated. But the question is, does the computer create a result that the programmer, looking back, cannot explain? When it comes to assessing creativity (and Read More ›

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Autonomous vehicles driving over the Golden Gate bridge in San Francisco

Driverless Cars Need Smarter Roads: A Tale From San Francisco

As Jonathan Bartlett notes, the recent Frisco foul-up shows the need for roads adapted to include self-driving cars

The future was here, briefly at least. The driverless cars of GM’s autonomous driving unit, Cruise, started charging fares early last month in a limited area in San Francisco. Google’s Waymo also operates driverless cars in Frisco but hasn’t yet started charging fares. With the regulators and the tech media, it certainly seemed like all systems were go: The era of commercial autonomous robotaxi service is here — Cruise officially became the first company to offer fared rides to the general public in a major city as of late Wednesday. The milestone comes after Cruise received official approval from the California Public Utilities Commission in early June to operate driverless in a commercial capacity. Initially, Cruise’s driverless autonomous offering will Read More ›

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A group of people playing gambling in a casino

Gambling: When advantage players team up, dealer beware!

On the other hand, the movie industry has made a good thing from films of the legendary exploits

Gambling has got to be a slam dunk exciting premise for films. Once again, mathematician, computer scientist, engineer — and part-time gambler — Salvador Cordova joins fellow engineer and Walter Bradley Center director Robert J. Marks to talk about gambling and probability — how hard math types (advantage players) like himself have beaten the odds without cheating. And, this time, they discuss how their skills while working together can wind up as a movie. From Robert J. Marks in Card Counting Strategies and Dangers (podcast): https://mindmatters.ai/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/06/Mind-Matters-News-Episode-192-Sal-Cordova-Episode-4-rev1.mp3 This portion begins at 00:23 min. A partial transcript and notes, Show Notes, and Additional Resources follow. Robert J. Marks: Have you ever taken advantage of your skills embedding with other people? … Sal Read More ›

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3D render AI artificial intelligence technology CPU central processor unit chipset on the printed circuit board for electronic and technology concept select focus shallow depth of field

How Well Do Researchers Say Chatbots and Other AI Really Perform?

The 400 researchers found that getting moderately high performance requires models with around 100 billion parameters, an exponentially hard problem

A vast team of over 400 researchers recently released a new open-access study on the performance of recent, popular text-based AI architectures such as GPT, the Pathways Language Model, the (recently controversial) LaMBDA architecture, and sparse expert models. The study, titled the “Beyond the Imitation Game,” or BIG, tries to provide a general benchmark for the state of text-based AI, how it compares to humans on the same tasks, and the effect of model size on the ability to perform the task. First, many of the results were interesting though not surprising: ● In all categories, the best humans outdid the best AIs (though that edge was smallest on translation problems from the International Language Olympiad).● Bigger models generally showed Read More ›

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Abstract background architecture lines. modern architecture detail

3. In Infinity, Lines and Squares Have an Equal Number of Points

We can demonstrate this fact with a simple diagram

In previous posts, we have established that two sets are of the same size if there is a one-to-one correspondence between the elements of both sets. Applying this principle to Cantor’s theory of infinity leads us to the weird but valid conclusion that the number of points on a line segment is the same as the number of points in a square. To show that this is true, here is a picture of a unit length line segment and a unit square. Let’s choose a point on the line segment. Let’s say 0.6917381276543… . It’s shown with a big blue dot on the line segment on the left. If this point corresponds to an irrational number, it goes on forever Read More ›

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Cute curious cat looking into fridge

Can We Eliminate the Idea of Function From the Study of Life?

The question is, can biology journals take away what they did not give, without harming their own enterprise?

We tend to assume that our values come in part from the careers we follow. Often, that’s true. If a given mindset works well at work, we may try it at home. But that process can work in reverse. We can start with a mindset and try to graft it onto our work. With mixed results. That seems to have happened in some quarters in biology. For example, the term “function” in life forms is linked historically with the idea that life forms show evidence of design. Therefore, philosopher Emmanuel Ratti and molecular biologist Pierre-Luc Germain argue, biologists shouldn’t use it: The notion of biological function is fraught with difficulties — intrinsically and irremediably so, we argue. The physiological practice Read More ›