Mind Matters Natural and Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis

Denyse O'Leary

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Denyse O'Leary
Date
October 25, 2018
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Artificial Intelligence, Social Factors
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How AI could run the world

Its killer apps, in physicist Max Tegmark's tale, include a tsunami of "message" films
Denyse O'Leary
October 25, 2018
5
Artificial Intelligence, Social Factors

In traditional fairy tales, an explanatory gap can be addressed by magic. After all, most readers will grant a writer one impossibility (for example, that a boy’s horse has human intelligence) just to get the story moving. Unfortunately, science fiction is one genre that doesn’t work that way. The author must make the claim sound like science, a problem Tegmark vaults right over.

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Denyse O'Leary
Date
October 23, 2018
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Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Social Factors
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Could AI write novels?

George Orwell thought so, as long as no thinking was involved
Denyse O'Leary
October 23, 2018
4
Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Social Factors

Serious literature will always be written, to borrow a phrase from Winston Churchill, in “blood, toil, tears and sweat” because imaging the human condition accurately is part of its nature. And if the writer lives in an unfree society, serious literature will also be written in fear.

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Denyse O'Leary
Date
October 8, 2018
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Machine Learning, Social Factors
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I, Robot, am gathering dust in the sales room …

Why do robotics experts think that customers will warm to robots because they look like people?
Denyse O'Leary
October 8, 2018
3
Machine Learning, Social Factors

The underlying assumption is surely incorrect. Robots like the Roomba succeed in part because they don’t look or act like people, let alone threaten people. They just do jobs people would prefer not to do or maybe can’t.

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Denyse O'Leary
Date
October 2, 2018
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Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning
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Deep Learning won’t solve AI

AlphaGo pioneer: We need “another dozen or half-a-dozen breakthroughs”
Denyse O'Leary
October 2, 2018
2
Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning

Hassabis: “AlphaGo doesn’t understand language but we would like them to build up to this symbolic level of reasoning — maths, language, and logic.

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Denyse O'Leary
Date
September 25, 2018
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Artificial Intelligence, Natural Intelligence, Neuroscience, Social Factors
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Inner peace: Is there software for that?

Tech billionaire funds neuroscience in a search for the secret of contentment
Denyse O'Leary
September 25, 2018
3
Artificial Intelligence, Natural Intelligence, Neuroscience, Social Factors

His approach to neuroscience is very different from that of the Dalai Lama, who facilitates neuroscience research to better understand contemplation as a path to inner peace. Chen’s focus is more on developing virtual reality.

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Denyse O'Leary
Date
September 15, 2018
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Ethics, Machine Learning, Social Factors
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The true cost of “free” social media

It’s free but… are we? George Gilder points a way forward.
Denyse O'Leary
September 15, 2018
5
Ethics, Machine Learning, Social Factors

He thinks that expected massive increases in computing power will enable blockchain technologies that allow users to safely bypass the global data monopoly that Google and similar firms represent.

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Denyse O'Leary
Date
September 11, 2018
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Events, Machine Learning, Social Factors
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Google branches out into politics

Unfortunately, the only political model it would likely know is: One-party state
Denyse O'Leary
September 11, 2018
6
Events, Machine Learning, Social Factors

The unchallenged manipulation of search engine results during elections is a new phenomenon made possible by the domination of the internet by a few big players.

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Denyse O'Leary
Date
September 3, 2018
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Social Factors
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Silicon Valley grew old before it grew up

By April of this year, 100 employees were complaining about the Google groupthink
Denyse O'Leary
September 3, 2018
3
Social Factors

Quip making the rounds: Would you trust a self-driving car from Google? Answer: Sure, if I needed a car that decided for me where I should go and then just drove me there.

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Denyse O'Leary
Date
September 3, 2018
Categorized
Data Privacy
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Our anonymity may be an illusion

Because we talk about ourselves so much online, few leaked pieces may even be required to identify us. 
Denyse O'Leary
September 3, 2018
2
Data Privacy

Dr. Dinerstein: In what is now a classic study, researchers used de-identified credit card data for 1.1 million people, in 10,000 stores over a three-month period. Using just four pieces of “outside” data they could identify 90% of the shoppers.

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Denyse O'Leary
Date
September 1, 2018
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Machine Learning, Social Factors
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Karl Marx’s Eerie AI Prediction

He felt that capitalism would fall when machines replaced human labor
Denyse O'Leary
September 1, 2018
4
Machine Learning, Social Factors

Because Marx held that the value of goods resided in the labor required to produce them, if goods were produced by automatons, without human labor, the economy would fall apart and capitalism would fail.

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Denyse O'Leary
Date
August 31, 2018
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Artificial Intelligence, Philosophy of Mind, Social Factors
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Could AI Understand the Universe?

World-renowned chemist thinks it might understand what we can’t, including consciousness
Denyse O'Leary
August 31, 2018
4
Artificial Intelligence, Philosophy of Mind, Social Factors

Atkins is arguing that the fact that we do not understand what consciousness is, far from being a barrier to creating artificial consciousness, offers the hope that, once we do create them, artificially conscious entities will understand consciousness but we won’t. The proposition sounds a bit confused, no?

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Denyse O'Leary
Date
August 30, 2018
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Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Work
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Robogeddon!! Pause.

Wait. This just in: AI is NOT killing all our jobs
Denyse O'Leary
August 30, 2018
5
Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Work

Jay Richards, author of The Human Advantage: The Future of American Work in an Age of Smart Machines,sees it as more of a retooling than a meltdown. But retooling does mean change, work, cost, and risk.

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Denyse O'Leary
Date
August 29, 2018
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Ethics, Social Factors
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Silicon Valley as a Colonial Power

Irish writer asks us to look more carefully at claims about “liberation”
Denyse O'Leary
August 29, 2018
4
Ethics, Social Factors

The social media companies will force us to define ourselves over against the specifications of our would-be programmers. And say what you want about the conflict, it will never be dull.

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Denyse O'Leary
Date
August 28, 2018
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Social Factors
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Giant Google’s Vulnerable Spot

Social media are free because we are both the content and the market
Denyse O'Leary
August 28, 2018
4
Social Factors

Recently, we looked at philosopher of technology George Gilder’s Life after Google: The Fall of Big Data and the Rise of the Blockchain Economy. But what form would that decline take? A look at the advertising picture offers one clue.

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Denyse O'Leary
Date
August 25, 2018
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Machine Learning, Social Factors
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Ethics for an Information Society

Because machines can’t learn to solve their own ethical problems
Denyse O'Leary
August 25, 2018
2
Machine Learning, Social Factors

AI (machine learning) was probably faster and cheaper but the whole point of the system was supposed to be justice which, whatever the explanation, proved too difficult to calculate…

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Denyse O'Leary
Date
August 24, 2018
Categorized
Natural Intelligence, Neuroscience, Philosophy of Mind
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Do Big Brains Matter to Human Intelligence?

We don’t know. Brain research readily dissolves into confusion at that point
Denyse O'Leary
August 24, 2018
2
Natural Intelligence, Neuroscience, Philosophy of Mind

We also know very little about the human brain. Take this controversy about why the large human brain evolved…

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Denyse O'Leary
Date
August 22, 2018
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Social Factors
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Hell Is a “Parasocial” Place

Where your "friends" may not even exist
Denyse O'Leary
August 22, 2018
4
Social Factors

Consumer digital hells can be dreadful indeed but they are mostly of our own making. The companies that profit from them are not forcing us to live in them. That said, students should be taught in school that the internet’s virtual world features a great deal of fakery, including fake friends.

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Denyse O'Leary
Date
August 20, 2018
Categorized
Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning
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Sometimes the ‘Bots Turn Out To Be Humans

That “lifelike” effect was easier to come by than some might think
Denyse O'Leary
August 20, 2018
3
Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning

Companies sometimes pretend to be using AI or machine learning when they are actually using human employees for various reasons. One reason is that they have promised potential investors more high tech than they can deliver. Sometimes, as we learned recently at The Guardian, it gets a bit sticky…

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Biometric facial recognition on smartphone. Unlock smartphone as it scans his face.
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Denyse O'Leary
Date
August 20, 2018
Categorized
Machine Learning, Social Factors
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Will AI Liberate or Enslave Developing Countries?

Perhaps that depends on who gets there first with the technology
Denyse O'Leary
August 20, 2018
3
Machine Learning, Social Factors

Karl D. Stephan: Zimbabwe, an African country well-known for its human-rights abuses, has received advanced Chinese AI technology from a startup company in exchange for letting the firm have access to the country’s facial-recognition database. So China is helping the government of Zimbabwe to keep tabs on its citizens as well.

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