Mind Matters Natural and Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis

CategoryArtificial Intelligence

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I caught a huge fish
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News
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December 17, 2020
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Artificial Intelligence
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#12! AI Is Going To Solve All Our Problems Soon!

In our countdown for the Top Twelve AI Hypes of 2020
News
December 17, 2020
Artificial Intelligence

First, before we get started: The AI industry has been making real progress. But with real progress comes real hype. That figures. We spent all year covering the real progress. Now that we are all kicking up our feet, we are going to send up some of the hype. We used to only have 10 top hypes but now we have 12. If progress continues at this pace, we might end up with 59 by 2050… Anyway, our Walter Bradley Center director Robert J. Marks interviewed fellow computer nerds, members of our Brain Trust, Jonathan Bartlett and Eric Holloway on their picks last Saturday. And here’s #12! The article itself is actually an admission rather than a hype but let’s…

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Mosquito stuck in honey
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Author
Heather Zeiger
Date
December 16, 2020
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Artificial Intelligence, Surveillance
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Hi Tech and China: The Long Game re Spying in the United States

The relationship between California’s Eric Swalwell and Fang Fang could be a thriller. But they say it really happened
Heather Zeiger
December 16, 2020
Artificial Intelligence, Surveillance

An investigative report from news site Axios reveals that Christine Fang (better known as Fang Fang), a fundraiser for Representative Eric Swalwell (D.–California), not only interacted with political elites in California but cultivated relationships with two Midwestern governors. She is also accused of being a spy for China from 2011 to 2015. This story adds to the growing evidence that China is playing the long-game of influencing American politics: Start with promising figures at the bottom, not at the top: The case demonstrates China’s strategy of cultivating relationships that may take years or even decades to bear fruit. The Chinese Communist Party knows that today’s mayors and city council members are tomorrow’s governors and members of Congress.” Bethany Allen-Ebrahimian and…

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Chess Pieces on Board for Game and Strategy
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News
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December 14, 2020
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Artificial Intelligence, Science
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The World’s First Quantum Chess Tournament Announces a Winner

Quantum chess allows for superposition, entanglement, and interference
News
December 14, 2020
Artificial Intelligence, Science

Perimeter Institute’s Aleksander Kubica won: So what’s quantum chess? It’s a complicated version of regular chess that incorporates the quantum concepts of superposition, entanglement, and interference. “It’s like you’re playing in a multiverse but the different boards [in different universes] are connected to each other,” said Caltech physicist Spiros Michalakis during a livestream of the tournament. “It makes 3D chess from Star Trek look silly.” Jennifer Ouellette, “We have a winner in the world’s first quantum chess tournament” at Ars Technica Okay: Superposition: Elementary particles of our universe are not in one single specific place, they are only in a probable one. Entanglement: What happens to one elementary particle affects any other particle entangled with it, no matter how far…

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Bottom view close-up of four white surveillance cameras
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Author
Jonathan Bartlett
Date
December 14, 2020
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Artificial Intelligence, Economics, Ethics
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How Toxic Bias Infiltrates Computer Code

A look at the dark underbelly of modern algorithms
Jonathan Bartlett
December 14, 2020
Artificial Intelligence, Economics, Ethics

The newly released documentary Coded Bias from Shalini Kantayya takes the viewer on a tour of the way modern algorithms can undermine justice and society and are actively subverting justice at the present moment. Coded Bias highlights many under-discussed issues regarding data and its usage by governments and corporations. While its prescriptions for government usage of data are well considered, the issue of corporate use of data involves many additional issues that the film skirts entirely. As the film points out, we are presented these algorithms as if they were a form of intelligence. But they are actually just math—and this math can be used to, intentionally or unintentionally, encode biases. In fact, as Bradley Center fellows Robert J. Marks…

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White robot woman using digital sphere connection hologram 3D rendering
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News
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December 13, 2020
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Artificial Intelligence, Arts & Culture
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Robots Really Don’t Explain It All for Us—But They Helpfully Try

And what else can they do? The literature written about their efforts is often a lot of fun!
News
December 13, 2020
Artificial Intelligence, Arts & Culture

When computer whiz Rosalind Picard gave a course at MIT in 1997,“Toward Machines That Can Deny Their Maker,” she included some dialogue from a play she had written. As she tells it, The dialogue was inspired, in part, by the 1921 play of Karel Čapek, entitled “R.U.R.,” which stands for Rossum’s Universal Robots. This play is where the word robot originated, from the Czech “robotit,” which means “to drudge.” In R.U.R., humans have figured out the secret to making robots that are emotional and alive. However, the robots can only live for 20 years. Afterward, they expire (die.) Karel Čapek (pictured) invented the concept and maybe even the word, robots: As Picard tells it, “The robots in this dialogue share…

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3D Illustration Emotionen als Freisteller
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Author
Denyse O'Leary
Date
December 13, 2020
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Artificial Intelligence, Natural Intelligence, Philosophy of Mind, Religion
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Can We Teach a Computer to Feel Things? A Dialogue…

Okay, There’s the computer’s side… and then there’s the dog’s side. Listen to both
Denyse O'Leary
December 13, 2020
Artificial Intelligence, Natural Intelligence, Philosophy of Mind, Religion

The dialogue got started because of a gifted computer nerd, Rosalind Picard, also a playwright (pictured), who decided to become an evangelical Christian in midlife (approx 2019). As she tells it, “a flat, black-and-white existence suddenly turned full-color and three-dimensional.” The director of MIT’s Media Lab, she had also written a book in 2000 called Affective Computing which seems to suggest that one could somehow give emotions to machines. I asked Eric Holloway to help me figure that one out: O’Leary: Emotions are based on actual well-being or suffering. How can something that is not alive have actual emotions? Don’t think of people here!; think of dogs. Dogs have emotions. When my computer is giving trouble, I certainly hope it’s…

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Sun over green grass field
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News
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December 13, 2020
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Artificial Intelligence, Philosophy of Mind
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Walter Bradley: An Engineer Who Has Made a Difference

He has impacted many, many lives, and the world is a much better place because of him
News
December 13, 2020
Artificial Intelligence, Philosophy of Mind

Mind Matters News is sponsored by the Walter Bradley Center for Natural and Artificial Intelligence at Discovery Institute. A new biography is just out about Distinguished Fellow, Walter Bradley, after whom our center is named. Walter Bradley has been many things: scientist, professor, NASA researcher, proponent of reconciliation of faith and science, and a leader in empowering people in Africa with appropriate technologies. Walter Bradley is not a household name, but in a fairer world he would be. He’s sort of like George Bailey in the classic film It’s a Wonderful Life: He has impacted many, many lives, and the world is a much better place because of him. Titled For a Greater Purpose: The Life and Legacy of Walter…

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Hot air balloons flying over spectacular Cappadocia.Turkey
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Author
News
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December 11, 2020
Categorized
Artificial Intelligence, Philosophy of Mind
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Help Mind Matters News Continue in 2021

In an otherwise bad year, you have a chance to make your mind matter
News
December 11, 2020
Artificial Intelligence, Philosophy of Mind

Please help Mind Matters News thrive in 2021 by donating to our sponsor. We live in a culture where human uniqueness is increasingly questioned, and where claims about “intelligent” machines replacing human beings are embraced without serious skepticism. So where can you go to separate fact and fiction when it comes to debates over humans and machines? If you are reading this article, you know where: Mind Matters News! We supply news, analysis, and weekly podcasts that explore issues relating to mind, brain, neuroscience, personal responsibility, free speech, automation, and the use and abuse of new technologies. We do this all from the perspective that humans are unique and can’t be replaced by machines. Under the editorship of Denyse O’Leary,…

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lego figurines in front of circuits with other figurines
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News
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December 11, 2020
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Artificial Intelligence, Ethics
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How Do You Know That Your “AI” Isn’t a Human Being?

AI often depends not on geniuses, but on thousands of anonymous, toiling human workers
News
December 11, 2020
Artificial Intelligence, Ethics

Many people think that AI happens without human intervention. In reality, many toiling workers help make it possible. In a piece at Medium on ethical dangers of AI, Dorothea Baur (pictured) lists four concerns but one stands out. And it’s not science fiction: 4. AI hype downplays human contribution AI hype is also part of stories that exaggerate the capabilities of AI in the present when effectively humans are still doing most of the work — we have all heard about the thousands of ghost workers who are manually labeling data to feed algorithms under dire working conditions. So, presenting something as machine intelligence when it’s actually human intelligence, is also dishonest and it deprecates the humans doing the real…

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Bangkok, Thailand 25 AUG 2020. Men hand using digital tablet for search information on Google. Wireless Smartphone technology with intelligence search engine.
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Author
Denyse O'Leary
Date
December 8, 2020
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Artificial Intelligence, Ethics, Work
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Google’s Leading AI Ethics Researcher Fired, Amid Controversy

Her research team targeted Google’s “cash cow”: advertising
Denyse O'Leary
December 8, 2020
Artificial Intelligence, Ethics, Work

Timnit Gebru, a leading AI ethics researcher, was fired from Google early this month under circumstances that have raised suspicions across the industry: On December 2, the AI research community was shocked to learn that Timnit Gebru had been fired from her post at Google. Gebru, one of the leading voices in responsible AI research, is known among other things for coauthoring groundbreaking work that revealed the discriminatory nature of facial recognition, cofounding the Black in AI affinity group, and relentlessly advocating for diversity in the tech industry. But on Wednesday evening, she announced on Twitter that she had been terminated from her position as Google’s ethical AI co-lead. “Apparently my manager’s manager sent an email [to] my direct reports…

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Cybernetic Brain. Electronic chip in form of human brain in electronic cyberspace. Illustration on the subject of 'Artificial Intelligence'.
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Author
Gary Smith
Date
December 7, 2020
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Artificial Intelligence, Science
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AI: Still Just Curve Fitting, Not Finding a Theory of Everything

The AI Feynman algorithm is impressive, as the New York Times notes, but it doesn’t devise any laws of physics
Gary Smith
December 7, 2020
Artificial Intelligence, Science

Judea Pearl, a winner of the Turing Award (the “Nobel Prize of computing”), has argued that, “All the impressive achievements of deep learning amount to just curve fitting.” Finding patterns in data may be useful but it is not real intelligence. A recent New York Times article, “Can a Computer Devise a Theory of Everything?” suggested that Pearl is wrong because computer algorithms have moved beyond mere curve fitting. Stephen Hawking’s 1980 prediction that, “The end might not be in sight for theoretical physics, but it might be in sight for theoretical physicists” was quoted. If computers can now devise theories that make theoretical physicists redundant, then they are surely smarter than the rest of us. The program behind the…

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Concept of a futuristic quantum data center, supercomputer running with physical waves
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News
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December 4, 2020
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Artificial Intelligence, Programming
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Why Google’s “Quantum Supremacy” Isn’t Changing Much—Not Yet

Quantum computing was suggested by physicist Richard Feynman in 1982; the supremacy battles are quite recent
News
December 4, 2020
Artificial Intelligence, Programming

In last week’s podcast, “Enrique Blair on quantum computing,” Walter Bradley Center director Robert J. Marks talks with fellow computer engineer Enrique Blair about why quantum mechanics is so strange but important to our future. One thing they discussed was Google’s claim to quantum supremacy. What does it mean? Does it matter? https://episodes.castos.com/mindmatters/Mind-Matters-110-Enrique-Blair.mp3 The discussion of quantum supremacy begins at approximately 47:55. The Show Notes and transcript follow. Excerpts from the transcript: Robert J. Marks (pictured): Google recently announced they had achieved quantum supremacy. What is quantum supremacy, and how does that relate to the quantum computer and the other computers that we use today? Enrique Blair: It’s a pretty interesting buzzword. Maybe the first thing to mention is what…

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student term paper showing 'a' grade
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News
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December 3, 2020
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Artificial Intelligence, Education, Machine Learning
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Can a Computer Write Your Paper for You Someday Soon?

GPT-3 recently came up with a paragraph that—a pop psychologist agreed—sounded just like him
News
December 3, 2020
Artificial Intelligence, Education, Machine Learning

This summer the OpenAI lab, backed by $1 billion in funding from Microsoft, Google, and Facebook, released an updated version of GPT-3, a text generator that produces convincing sentences by analyzing, among other online sources, Wikipedia, countless blog posts, and thousands of digital books. According to a recent story by Cade Metz in the New York Times, one GPT-3 programmer decided to target pop psychologist Scott Barry Kaufman. Could GPT-3 really come up with a paragraph that sounded just like him? Kaufman himself (pictured) was really impressed with this one, on the subject of becoming more creative: I think creative expression is a natural byproduct of growing up in a diverse world. The more diverse the world is, the more…

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Theory of Everything concept
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News
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December 3, 2020
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Artificial Intelligence, Arts & Culture, Science
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Can a Powerful Enough Computer Work Out a Theory of Everything?

Some physicists hope so even if it would put them out of work. But is it possible?
News
December 3, 2020
Artificial Intelligence, Arts & Culture, Science

Recently, prominent physicists were asked whether a sufficiently powerful computer could come up with a Theory of Everything, by the sheer power of crunching numbers. As a recent New York Times article by Dennis Overbye shows, physicists were divided and uncertain: “It might be possible, physicists say, but not anytime soon. And there’s no guarantee that we humans will understand the result.” But doubt, in the view of multiverse theorist Max Tegmark, means we are guilty of “carbon chauvinism”—the idea that humans could be smarter than computers. The late Stephen Hawking thought that computers would replace humans and was alarmed by the prospect. According to Overbye, Hawking had been warning that computers would start to replace physicists in particular since…

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Human prion (3d model). Prion is an infectious agent that can fo
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News
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December 2, 2020
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Artificial Intelligence, Medicine and Health
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AlphaFold Scores Huge Breakthrough in Analyzing Causes of Disease

In a world so deeply designed and complexly organized, we need a quick and practical way of knowing what was going on in cells and viruses. AI can help
News
December 2, 2020
Artificial Intelligence, Medicine and Health

Alphabet’s DeepMind team has just scored a breakthrough in finding treatments for diseases. Their latest AlphaFold system won a grand challenge in analyzing the “folds” of proteins. Proteins—large and often very complex chains of amino acids—do the work in our cells. But, like all bodies, they are three-dimensional. We can’t understand them until we can analyze the folds (the third dimension) that are unique to each type among hundreds of thousands. Knowing what a given protein actually does (or doesn’t) is critical to developing many new medical treatments. How hard is the problem? In his acceptance speech for the 1972 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, Christian Anfinsen famously postulated that, in theory, a protein’s amino acid sequence should fully determine its…

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Computer error
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News
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November 30, 2020
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Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning
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Can AI Really Know When It Shouldn’t Be Trusted?

Some researchers claim to have taught AI how to recognize its own untrustworthiness. Others say that’s impossible
News
November 30, 2020
Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning

Recently, we were told that artificial intelligence is now smart enough to know when it can’t be trusted: How might The Terminator have played out if Skynet had decided it probably wasn’t responsible enough to hold the keys to the entire US nuclear arsenal? As it turns out, scientists may just have saved us from such a future AI-led apocalypse, by creating neural networks that know when they’re untrustworthy. David Nield, “Artificial Intelligence Is Now Smart Enough to Know When It Can’t Be Trusted” at ScienceAlert (November 25, 2020) That’s a big claim. Intelligent humans often can’t know when they are untrustworthy. These deep learning neural networks are designed to mimic the human brain by weighing up a multitude of…

high-risk-cholesterol-test-results-stockpack-adobe-stock.jpg
high risk cholesterol test results
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post
Author
Jonathan Bartlett
Date
November 30, 2020
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Artificial Intelligence, Mathematics
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Can an 18th Century Statistician Help Us Think More Clearly?

Distinguishing between types of probability can help us worry less and do more
Jonathan Bartlett
November 30, 2020
Artificial Intelligence, Mathematics

Thomas Bayes (1702–1761) (pictured), a statistician and clergyman, developed a theory of decision-making which was only discussed after his death and only became important in the 20th century. It is now a significant topic in philosophy, in the form of Bayesian epistemology. Understanding Bayes’ Rule may be essential to making good decisions. Let’s say that you are a generally healthy person and have no symptoms of any illness and no specific risk factors for any illness. Acting on a friend’s suggestion, you get screened for a variety of diseases, just to be sure. Of the diseases you test for, the HIV test comes back positive. You read on the package that the test is 99.6% accurate. Are you more likely…

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Fembot Robot Playing Chess with Woman
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News
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November 27, 2020
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Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Philosophy of Mind
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Are Computers That Win at Chess Smarter Than Geniuses?

No, and we need to look at why they can win at chess without showing even basic common sense
News
November 27, 2020
Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Philosophy of Mind

Big computers conquered chess quite easily. But then there was the Chinese game of go (pictured), estimated to be 4000 years old, which offers more “degrees of freedom” (possible moves, strategy, and rules) than chess (2×10170). As futurist George Gilder tells us, in Gaming AI, it was a rite of passage for aspiring intellects in Asia: “Go began as a rigorous rite of passage for Chinese gentlemen and diplomats, testing their intellectual skills and strategic prowess. Later, crossing the Sea of Japan, Go enthralled the Shogunate, which brought it into the Japanese Imperial Court and made it a national cult.” (p. 9) Then AlphaGo, from Google’s DeepMind, appeared on the scene in 2016: As the Chinese American titan Kai-Fu Lee…

two-young-businesspeople-or-scientists-with-robotic-hand-standing-in-office-talking-stockpack-adobe-stock.jpg
Two young businesspeople or scientists with robotic hand standing in office, talking.
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News
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November 26, 2020
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Artificial Intelligence, Military
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Computer Prof: Feds Should Avoid University, Seek Entrepreneurs

Too much time at the U is wasted on getting papers into theoretical journals, not enough time spent on innovation, he contends
News
November 26, 2020
Artificial Intelligence, Military

In a recent podcast, Walter Bradley Center director Robert J. Marks spoke with Robert D. Atkinson and Jackie Whisman at the prominent AI think tank, Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, about his recent book, The Case for Killer Robots—a plea for American military brass to see that AI is an inevitable part of modern defense strategies, to be managed rather than avoided. It may be downloaded free here. In this fourth part (here are Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3), the discussion turned to what the government’s top priority in tech policy should be: https://episodes.castos.com/mindmatters/Mind-Matters-109-Robert-Marks.mp3 The discussion of a top priority in tech policy begins at 20:31 (A portion of the transcript follows. The whole transcript is here. Notes…

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digital world
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Author
Heather Zeiger
Date
November 25, 2020
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Artificial Intelligence, Data Privacy, Global Technology, Surveillance
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China’s Eyes Are Watching Africa Closely

In exchange for help with high-tech communication systems, China gets to install mass surveillance technology
Heather Zeiger
November 25, 2020
Artificial Intelligence, Data Privacy, Global Technology, Surveillance

Depending on who you talk to, the twenty-year relationship between China and several countries in the African Union has been described as everything from mutually beneficial to asymmetric and dysfunctional right down to exploitative and neo-colonialist. Recent pre-COVID-19 surveys indicate that citizens of several African nations see their country’s interaction with China as largely positive. But if some African science fiction writers are any indicator, others see a dystopian future. The current onslaught of high-tech surveillance technologies from China provides a chance to compare the two views. Recently, I have written about racial tensions between African nationals and local government in Guangzhou amidst the COVID-19 pandemic and about how the pandemic has worsened African countries’ debt crisis, particularly due to…