Mind Matters Natural and Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis

Mind Matters

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Twitter doesn’t just seem out of control

It actually is.

Social media may be changing the world more than we think. And we may need some social leadership in fighting back against Twitter mobs. It probably won’t emerge from within because bullies are usually cowards.

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How do robots “care”?

Emotional robots’ cameras and sensors respond to your facial expressions, tone of voice, and movements

Critics of the emotional robotics industry say that the view of emotions (assumed in the industry to be only six) is oversimplified and that the robots are likely to promote stereotypes.

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George Montañez

What is Learning Anyway?

Machine learning specialist George Montañez reflects on the question in a video excerpt from the CNAI gala

Can we make approximations that are so close to ourselves that the fact that they are approximations no longer matters?

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Smartphone 10 Conversation 0

We need to be more honest about the addictive nature of the device, for some.

A guy on a date is not checking his phone three times in ten minutes because the world outside the restaurant is changing that fast. He is in the grip of an addiction.

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Airplane Controls

Will killer drones make killing easier?

That, says a bioethicist, depends on who the pilots are

Heather Zeiger tells us that traditional aerial combat pilots tend to think the same way when piloting drones from an office but it may be a different story when cell phone addicts, who tend to lack empathy, are recruited.

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Imagining Life after Google

Reviewers of George Gilder's new book weigh in

If we have simply taken the big software, hardware, and social media companies who dominate our lives for granted, the reactions from the business world to Life after Google: The Fall of Big Data and the Rise of the Blockchain Economy should give us a lot to think about.

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AI Is Not (Yet) an Intelligent Cause

So-called “white hat” hackers who test the security of AI have found it surprisingly easy to fool.

Hutson describes one test last year where a computer scientist at UC Berkeley subtly altered a stop sign with stickers. It fooled an autonomous vehicle’s image recognition system into “thinking” it was a 45 mph speed limit sign. Humans could immediately recognize the stop sign, but the car did not. Autonomous car makers wonder, could hackers turn them into terror weapons?

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The Threat, Promise, and Limits of AI

New Center to Explore the Possibilities

What is a human being? Are we unique creatures, bearing evidence of purpose in our making? Or are we meat-clad robots, a race of glitchy natural machines sprung up by chance through unguided evolution?

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Will the Machines Take Over?

Human Uniqueness in the Age of Smart Machines

Join the staff of Mind Matters in Seattle on Wednesday, July 11 for a fascinating evening exploring these questions as part of the launch of Discovery Institute’s new Walter Bradley Center for Natural and Artificial Intelligence, named in honor of Discovery Institute Fellow Walter Bradley, whose distinguished academic career included professorships at both Texas A&M and Baylor University.

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