Has AI Been Racist?
AI is, left to itself, inherently unthinking, which can result in insensitivity and biasJust any available data swatched into systems may embody prejudices that only become evident in use.
Read More ›Denyse O'Leary
US vs. China: Trade Wars Kill Businesses Rather Than People
That’s why we don’t hear so many songs about themTrade wars are important even if they often sound boring compared with other news. One panel at COSM will examine the underlying issues in the ongoing trade spats between the United States and China.
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Cats do bond with people
Both cats and kittens showed about the same level of attachment to caregivers as children and dogs didWhen a cat feels secure, he develops relationships with humans and dogs. But he won’t be either your servant or your master; just your housemate—and maybe at last your old friend.
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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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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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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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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 ›
Prof: Google Must Not Choose the Next President
Robert Epstein, a Clinton supporter in 2016, thinks Big Tech meddling is a risk. And, he says, he isn’t planning on suicideHe doesn’t want Silicon Valley to use its near-monopoly power over search engines and social media to manipulate the information available to the lone voter in the booth.
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Dolphinese: The Idea That Animals Think As We Do Dies Hard
But first it can lead us down strange paths
A Closer Look at Google’s Search Engine Bias
If Google’s CEO honestly believes that there is no political bias, that is, in itself, a big part of the problem
What Others Are Saying About the New Google Insider’s Revelations
The documents' authenticity is not in dispute. What to do about them is another matter
Whistleblower: Google Told Cops To Do a “Wellness Check” on Him
He can be seen doing a sort of perp walk on the video; some portions transcribed hereIn the documents Vorhies unearthed, Google seemed to be "intending to scope the information landscape so that they could create their own version of what was objectively true."
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Is Google a Cult? Or Does It Just Act That Way?
Project Veritas announces that a new rebel Googler has sent nearly 1000 documents on algorithm bias to the DOJWhile we prepare a news story on Zach Vorhies' revelations, it may be worth asking why one of the world’s largest companies has developed what appears to be the atmosphere of a political cult.
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Elephants Who Fly — or Become “Persons” — Are Magic
Okay, it's impossible. But then why do thinkers who disbelieve the one believe the other?For decades, researchers were transfixed with the idea of humanizing great apes by raising them among humans and teaching them language. Emerging from the ruins and recriminations of the collapse, philosophy prof Don Ross has a new idea: Let’s start with elephants instead.
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Why did Watson think Toronto was in the U.S.A.?
How that happened tells us a lot about what AI can and can’t do, to this dayStrictly speaking, the answer Watson spit out was "What is Toronto?????", which does sound distinctly less than certain. But the programmers had chosen not to program in the option of saying, “I don’t know.”
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Google Engineer Reveals Search Engine Bias
He found Google pretty neutral in 2014; the bias started with the US 2016 electionThe algorithms—the series of commands to computers—“don’t write themselves,” Coppola says. People who have their own opinions may write them into an algorithm, knowingly or otherwise.
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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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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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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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Could Machine Learning Decipher Lost Languages?
It gives us new search powers, based on perennial facts of languageAn endless variety of word games derives from the fact that only certain combinations and orderings of words can be correct. Machine learning applies vast resources to cracking the code.
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